


Abyssinia

by bettyboopz



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Best Friends, Body Dysphoria, Child Death (Implied), Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Fairy Tale Elements, Horror, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Tags may be added, monster love story because when are there ever enough of those
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettyboopz/pseuds/bettyboopz
Summary: "I wanna eat you, Steve," he whispers. "I wanna fucking eat you. Just wanna . . . Just let me, Steve. Just give me a little taste. Just a little.""Bucky." Steve wants to laugh, but then again, he doesn't at all. He wants to turn around in Bucky's arms and – "You the Soldier now or something?"Bucky doesn't answer.~The Winter Soldier is an ancient, bloodthirsty creature of legend. In 1945, Hydra perfects the serum that can turn a good man into an infamous harbinger of death. No one has ever crossed paths with one and lived, or so they say.Steve Rogers has always been exceptional.





	1. Prologue

**June** **, 1930**

"And he can see the light that means he's made it out of the forest, and he can see his house sitting on the hill. And just as Steve thinks he's gotten away from the monster, a set of claws as big as your arm sink into his leg and yank him back into the woods. He screams an' screams, but all the farmers getting up at dawn to feed their animals just think it's somebody else's hog getting whacked. Pretty soon he stops screaming. Anybody passing by would only hear the sounds of chewing–" 

"Aw, cut it out, Walter, Janey's cryin'." 

The storyteller, Walter Foley, flips his hat up and glares at Martin O'Malley. "Well, maybe you shouldn't have brought your baby sister out in the freezing cold to hear  _scary stories_ , genius." 

Bucky nudges Steve, who, swamped inside Bucky's old coat sitting on the old log and invisible save his nose and eyes as he is, resembles a fat brown bird. It's a shockingly brisk night for the middle of summer, and Mrs. Barnes insisted he wear it, just to be safe. 

"Whaddya know, a streak o' good luck," Bucky says, just loud enough for Steve to hear over the other boys having a full-on yelling match. "If the story'd gone on any longer you'd'a been dead for sure." 

Steve rolls his eyes. "I was already dead, case you weren't listening. The Soldier got me." 

Bucky shrugs. "He didn't say in so many words. Maybe you got the Soldier. Would'a made for a better ending, anyway." 

They laugh about it, bumping shoulders. Old Mr. O'Malley, Martin's grandfather, had brought out logs from the stack next to his fireplace and set them out for the boys to perch on, and Mr. Barnes had lit them a fire. It was as close to a camping experience they'd probably ever get in Brooklyn. 

"Hey, someday we're gonna have ourselves a campfire for real," Bucky tells him. "We'll sleep under the stars out in the woods like wild men. It'll just be you and me. You think, Stevie?" 

"Yeah, sure, we will, Buck. Hey, I turn thirteen next week. Maybe that's what I'll wish for." 

Bucky shoves him, face aghast. "You're not supposed to tell anyone, dumbass. Now it won't come true." 

"Since when do you buy into old wives' tales? Besides, you're Bucky 'n' I'm Steve. I figure you already know what I'm thinking anyway. And since it's for both of us, it's your wish too." 

Bucky beams at him, and that's the only reason Steve doesn't notice the figure crouched in the shadows just beyond them, watching. 

 


	2. Is You Is or Is You Ain't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extra, extra, night creeper terrorizing the streets of downtown Brooklyn, read all about it.

**Friday the 13** **th** **,** **October** **, 193** **8**

Bucky gets up to check the window, once, twice, three times, and finally Steve has to say something. 

"You scared the Soldier's gonna getcha or you tryna freeze your soles off? Get in bed." 

Bucky throws the curtains shut and stalks to the icebox. "Stuff an old shirt in it," he mutters, taking out the bottle of milk and taking a long swig. "Down at the docks today the Mitchell boys was talkin' about a night creeper. Davey Howard's little woman got the bejesus scared out of her the other night, walked out into the kitchen to get a glass of water and a man's standing there with his back to her, stark naked in front of the icebox and eating a piece of raw steak like an animal. Never heard anything like it." 

He goes back to the window as though despite himself and peers out, craning his neck up like something might be hovering in the air. He gets worked up every year around this time, and the date's not helping. It's that superstitious shit his parents passed down from their parents and their parents before them, probably. What tickles Steve is that Bucky would deny he was superstitious till he was blue in the face, but Steve knows better. The full moon and goosebumps season have got him riled, pacing around with his nails between his teeth, yanking Steve by the collar in the street to avoid black cats. 

Steve yawns, rubbing his cheek against his pillow. It drags a little more than he'd like – he'll have to remember to shave in the morning. "Was he oozin' blood at the mouth too?" 

"Talk all you want," Bucky says over his shoulder with that tilt of his chin he picked up from Mr. Barnes that says he's seconds away from dragging Steve across his knee, "When the Winter Soldier sneaks in to eat ya, I ain't gonna do anything to discourage him." He turns his back to him, but Steve sees him cross himself in the window's reflection. "Sassy little punk like you, you wouldn't last a minute." 

"You'd be surprised, pal," Steve says, letting his eyes slip shut. "I'd like to see ol' Soldier try to get me. Mouth like mine, I stand a chance to talk 'em to death." 

Bucky sighs, coming towards the bed and leaning a knee on it. "Better me than you, anyway," he says, and he says it so quiet and sad that Steve opens his eyes and makes to sit up to get a good look at him, but as it happens his bones are hurting and he's so tired he feels like gravity's a solid weight on his back, pressing him down into the mattress. He sinks back down and thumps his arm in the empty space beside him. 

"Lay down, Buck," he slurs. "Makin' me nervous. 'N I'm cold." 

Bucky moves to obey, but first flips up the blanket, grabbing his thigh with an ice-cold hand just to make Steve yelp and chuck him upside the head. 

"Oughtta make you sleep on the floor for that," Steve grouses, even as he throws all his meager energy into tugging Bucky onto his back and burrowing down against his side. Not cuddling. Just what they do to stave off the cold. "Just like a misbehaving little dog." 

"Aww, c'mon, kid, I'm housebroken and everything," Bucky groans into his neck, lifting Steve's hips easily, maneuvering him just how he wants him, tucked in tight to his side, spooned up front to back. 

Steve would never let Bucky's careless manhandling slide in light of day, but when it's cold and dark and there's nobody in New York or maybe the whole world but the two of them, these are the moments he lives for. He wouldn't admit it under oath, but he loves nothing better than the pleasure of Bucky's big hands on him, sometimes accidentally leaving telltale red marks that fade quicker than he'd like. 

He doesn't think too hard about how good or right it feels, doesn't question why he sometimes has to sneak off to the toilet in the middle of the night to pull one out while pressing hard into a Bucky-shaped bruise that will be gone by morning. It's just how it's always been since he was old enough to feel these things, same as he doesn't think about Bucky sometimes chewing on his ear or trailing fingertips up under his shirt the same as whispering, a hushed touch that's easily caught and carried away by the slightest breeze, until it's hard to say whether it really was said at all. 

"Just because you don't piss on the furniture don't make you tame." 

Steve shivers as a thickly muscled arm snakes around him, fingers holding tight to his stomach. He won't say anything, though. Speaking about such fragile things risks popping them apart like a soap bubble. He knows that without having to think about it. Instead he tentatively reaches down to Bucky's hand, and though surely he can't see it, Bucky's hand opens instinctively to let their fingers slide together. 

"I'm a better boy since you got me, though." Bucky's breath is hot as a stovetop on the back of Steve's neck. "You gotta give me that." 

"Sure, when I found you you were carrying fleas and biting the hand that fed you. 'Course you were also going on five." 

"Well, you know," Bucky rumbles, "I'm tame where it counts, nowadays. And I'll look out for you, Steve. I won't let the Soldier get so much as a drop of blood on my good carpet." 

Steve rubs a hand over his eyes and laughs. "Jesus, you and your goddamn Soldier. I'm not going to let you around those Mitchell boys anymore if they keep filling your head with ghost stories. You were never that spooked on the Winter Soldier when we were kids." 

"Nah, but your ma was, God rest her soul. She tried to put the fear of God in us, and when that didn't work, she tried the Soldier. Remember the time she told you –" 

"If we didn't get up for Mass in the morning it would drag us under the bed?" 

Bucky snorts. "We both slept in anyway, because in the middle of the night she runs in crying, thinking the Soldier's gonna nab us. She felt so bad she let us get away with murder for days." 

Steve smiles at the memory. "She even checked us for bites. Just in case." 

"You get bitten by the Soldier you're a goner, but she was an optimistic little woman, your ma," Bucky says fondly. 

A comfortable silence descends for a while and Steve lets himself drift off, unsure of how much time has passed. 

He's startled back to awareness by Bucky trailing his little fangs lightly over Steve's pulse point, chuckling. The exhalation makes Steve shudder. 

"If I bit down . . ." He licks a hot stripe up his throat instead. "Think anyone'd see, Rogers? Think they'd think your little dame was marking you up in the sack? Hmm?" 

They've never done more than hold hands or the occasional wandering of lips across each other's necks or shoulders when they were lying down to sleep, stuff they weren't supposed to think about, weren't supposed to remember, but Bucky . . . but Bucky . . . 

"Hey, hey, Buck, what's gotten into you?" He grabs Bucky's wrist where his hand has slid up to his throat. Not hard, not trying to pull him away. Just holding. Feeling Bucky's fluttering pulse under his fingertips, or maybe it's his own. "You know I ain't got a dame." He dares a look over his shoulder, smiling so maybe Bucky can take it as a joke, if he wants. "I only got you." 

Bucky doesn't smile back. Instead he buries his face into the nape of Steve's neck and growls, something that sounds a lot like " _Steve_ ," but could be anything, really. 

"I wanna eat you, Steve," he whispers. "I wanna fucking eat you. Just wanna . . . Just let me, Steve. Just give me a little taste. Just a little." 

"Bucky." Steve wants to laugh, but then again, he doesn't at all. He wants to turn around in Bucky's arms and – "You the Soldier now or something?" 

Bucky doesn't answer.  

"I don't know what the hell you're . . ." He shakes himself. "You know what. If it'll make you stop being so nervy, do it." 

Bucky whines. Steve feels him shake his head. "I don't think so, Steve, I just want, I just want so bad, I know I shouldn't. Kick me out. Make me sleep on the floor. Please, Steve, come on." 

"Sounds to me like you don't know what you want," Steve says, surprisingly even for how his heart's pounding inside his mouth. "But you're not sleeping on the floor. Come on, Bucky, what do you want? Tell me." 

Bucky shakes his head again, but says, "I want you inside me. I want everything you got." 

Steve forgets what words mean for a second. "You want. You." 

Bucky rushes on like he hadn't spoken, like if he stops for a second he'll never speak again. 

"I want to know what you taste like. I want to wake up at night feeling your little ass against me and I want to be able to reach down and give it a squeeze. I want to treat you right, make you feel good. It's like a pounding in my brain sometimes when I look at you,  _I want, I want, I want you_. You feel that?" He hauls Steve closer, if that's even possible, so they're pressed back to chest completely. 

Bucky puts his hand over Steve's heart and holds him tight. "Feel that, Steve?"  _Thump-_ _th_ _-thump,_ says their hearts. "That's how I fucking want you. In me, right where I need you to live, where you can't ever leave." He nibbles on Steve's earlobe, and that's kind of familiar, but familiar in a way that feels like he's only known it in a dream and now he's wide awake. Bucky breathes into his ear, "You know why, Steve?" 

Steve wants to say no but can only shake his head. 

"Because you're mine." 

And Bucky bites down into his neck, hard. 

It shouldn't feel good, just like it shouldn't feel good when Steve wakes up from a deep sleep to find he can't move for Bucky snoring on top of him, every inch of his body unconsciously holding him down, or when Bucky so much as smiles at him first thing in the morning when he's still halfway asleep and his soft, dreamy eyes say he was dreaming of Steve. 

It does feel good, and before Steve can blink or cry out or pray to the Lord, he moans. 

It breaks the spell. Bucky's teeth retreat and so does Bucky. In seconds he leaps off the bed. "Christ, Steve, I'm sorry, I don't know why the fuck – Did I hurt you?" He's practically running to the bathroom. "Shit, I shouldn't have done that." 

Steve reaches out like he can pull him back with an invisible rope, and in someone else's low-pitched, pitiful voice, says, " _Bucky._ " 

Bucky freezes in the doorway with a rag in one hand and a bottle of disinfectant in the other. His wide eyes take in the state of Steve. Dropping everything, eyebrows climbing up to his hairline, he looks like he might faint. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah. C'mere, Buck. Before I'm old and gray." 

Bucky doesn't need to be told twice. He comes back to bed, albeit slowly, all but ringing his hands. He gets in carefully, sidling back up to Steve like he might get told off any second. Steve never likes seeing cocksure Bucky Barnes at a loss, so he wraps both arms around him and cups the back of his head to pull him closer. 

"You were exhausted earlier," Bucky says like he means it to sound teasing, but he just sounds shy. Can't even meet his gaze. Steve wants to reach out to turn a light on to confirm that he's blushing, but it might break the moment and he can't take that chance. 

"Yeah, well, that's before you started hacking up your guts to me," Steve says. "What the hell was that, Bucky? Don't gimme that good girl routine now." 

Bucky looks up at him from beneath his lashes. "I don't know. I don't . . . I don't feel like myself. I feel like something's going to happen." 

Steve pulls back just enough to see Bucky's face. Bucky's eyes are shifting like he's trying to read something from Steve's forehead, but then they snap to Steve's, wet, feverish. He looks like he's about to get shot. 

"I been having nightmares again," he says quietly. "The ones where I'm a monster." 

"Aw, Bucky. You're not a monster," Steve says firmly. "Well, maybe when you're hungover." He tucks a wild strand of hair from out of Bucky's eyes. "You wanna talk about it?" 

"No." Slowly, his hand creeps up to Steve's neck again. They just look at each other for a minute, speaking a silent language no one else knows. Then: "Hey, Steve?" 

"Yeah, Buck?" 

"I'm a little off my rocker lately, that's true, but I meant what I said." 

Steve's breath catches. He sits up, looking down at Bucky, who no longer looks shy, just nervous and keyed up. He lays a hand over Bucky's heart. 

"Right here, Buck? This is where you want me, right?" 

Bucky sucks in a loud breath. "Steve . . ." 

"Come on, Buck, you're my friend. You think I put up with you for my health? So maybe Father O'Connor will give me a pat on the back on Sunday?" 

Bucky throws an arm over his eyes and groans. "Don't bring Father O'Connor into this." 

Steve ignores him, dragging his arm away. "You're my best friend in the world, Buck." He hesitates only a second before throwing his leg over Bucky's hips and straddling him, ducking down so their faces are inches apart. "I'm right here. Always have been, and I ain't goin' anywhere. All yours." 

Bucky's eyes burn in the low light. "Don't tease me, Steve." 

"Who, me?" Steve pulls back to give him his most put-upon look. "Like you've been teasing me for years? Put your hands on me." 

Bucky's mitts come to rest on his waist over his sleep shirt. His thumbs rub little circles, but Bucky still looks unsure. 

"I didn't scare you?" he asks. He touches the back of Steve's neck that's still wet with saliva and a little raised, fingertips digging in. Steve would swear he doesn't realize he's doing it. 

"You scared up somethin'." He grinds down on Bucky's stomach. "Damnit, Bucky, what'd you think you were doing to me when you talk to me like that? You talk up your girls like that?" 

"I talk to 'em." 

"That's not what I asked and you know it." 

Bucky doesn't say anything. He eases Steve down to lie against his chest, stroking his fingers through Steve's downy hair with one hand and encouraging the gentle rock of his hips with the other. 

"You're something special, Rogers," Bucky says quietly. 

Steve flicks him in the temple. He hopes Bucky hasn't noticed yet how harsh his breathing's gotten, because that could put an end to this quick. "Quit that. Ain't nothing special about me." 

"Everything about you is special to me. You're my special baby." 

Steve gasps and puts it down to the fact he can feel Bucky's hard on against his thigh. "You can't say that, Buck," he says breathlessly, "I ain't your girl." 

"Never said anything about you was my girl," Bucky says loftily, rolling his hips up this time to meet Steve's. "Said you're my baby, 's'a difference. You my baby, Steve? Tell me the truth. You my baby?" 

 _No!_  his brain cries indignantly, but to his embarrassment what falls out of his mouth is " _Yes_ , God, yes, Bucky, I'm your baby." 

"That's right," Bucky growls. He surges up and kisses him, and what takes Steve by surprise is that it should be rough and desperate, but it isn't. Bucky kisses him so soft and careful Steve should feel offended, but he stops thinking and just opens his mouth for more. Steve's brains short circuits a little when Bucky's hot tongue laps at his, he thinks he might have died and if this was the afterlife it'd be just fine with him. 

When Bucky pulls back for air his lips are wet and his eyes are black. 

"Lookit you," he says reverently, looking up at him like somebody a little more proper might look at a painting of the second coming of Christ. He brushes his fingers up Steve's chest, eyeing him like he means to commit this moment to memory. "What'd I do, huh? How's a fool like me wind up with a looker like you? You're red to your toes, I bet. Christ, if it weren't freezing I'd strip you right now so I could see how far that cute blush goes." 

"Shut . . .  _up_ ," Steve pants, but he doesn't mean it. Not a bit. 

Bucky's noticed how hard he's breathing, though, and he cocks an eyebrow at him. "Doing alright?" 

Steve moves faster against him, spikes of pure pleasure rushing up his spine at war with how he's fighting for air. "If you stop right now, I swear to God, Bucky . . ." 

Something clatters in the kitchen. They share a brief look that could mean anything, and then they're both up and running, Bucky pausing to grab his heater from Steve's desk and Steve taking up a baseball bat. 

The kitchen is dark. The combination of a spike of adrenaline and the cold has Steve shaking all over, so bad he nearly walks into Bucky twice. 

"C'mon, man, I know you're here," Bucky says, turning off the safety. "Just wanna talk." 

"Bucky." Steve feels a little ridiculous, trembling like he is, but his voice comes out hard steel. "Cool it. Could be someone coming in from the cold." 

"What are the chances of that, wise guy?" He strides to the window and looks out, then when he sees nothing there he goes to the front door and pokes his head in the hallway. "Come on, creep, let's see how big you are now!" 

"Hey, Bucky." 

Bucky turns to him and even in the dark Steve sees how pale he's grown. His teeth grind together visibly. 

"It was probably nothing," Steve says. "Just the wind or something. Let's go back to bed, alright? You can put the gun away." 

Bucky looks down at the floor and mumbles something. Then his eyes widen and he gestures to his feet with the gun. "That look like nothing to you?" 

A pool of blood spreads out from the counter like an innocent leak in the sink, but it's too dark to be water. It seeps up Bucky's white socks, painting them black. 

"Good Lord!" Steve rushes to the lamp and turns it on. Sure enough, red blood covers the white floor. Bucky's not moving, so Steve goes to the cupboard under the sink and throws the door open. He braces himself to find a dying animal or, God forbid, a child. But there's nothing. 

Bucky stares down at the warm, wet stain, slack-jawed, expression blank. 

"It's like someone was standing here bleeding," he says flatly. "But now they're not." 

Seeing Bucky's in some sort of daze, Steve tugs the gun from his hand and shoves it into a drawer. Then he goes to the bathroom and checks behind the shower curtain, behind the door, and then the closet, next the bedroom. There's no one there. 

"We need to report this," Steve says, coming back into the kitchen to find Bucky in the same spot he'd left him. He comes up to him and doesn't stop till they're toe to toe, decidedly ignoring the wetness getting into his socks, so Bucky's forced to look at him instead of blood or blank space. "Bucky? You with me?" 

Bucky blinks at him. He shakes himself, as if he's coming out of a dream. "In the morning?" he asks pleadingly. 

Steve's stumped by the response, but Bucky's got to be tired, and this thing with the night creeper has really gotten under his skin. He relents. "Alright, Buck. Whatever you want. We'll go down and report it first thing in the morning." He starts to rest a hand on his arm, then hesitates. Is that not allowed anymore? Maybe things have to be different between them now. Is that what has Bucky acting so skittish? But in the end he does it anyway. "We good?" 

Bucky blinks again, and then nods vigorously. "'Course, Steve. Everything's fine." Before Steve can protest, he sweeps him up and sets him in a chair. "Except for these socks. They gotta go. Sit tight." He kneels on the floor and peels Steve's socks off, then his own. He goes to the bathroom and reappears seconds later with a wet rag and they take turns wiping the blood off their feet, then Bucky scrubs down the floor. 

Steve can feel Bucky staring at him. Finally, Bucky says, "You're awful quiet, pal." 

"Just wondering what we're gonna do now, is all." 

There's a pause. Then Bucky stands and comes around to stand behind Steve's chair, bending down with his arms hanging over Steve's shoulders. He leans his chin on Steve's shoulder and nudges his cheek with his own. 

"Was thinking I'd take you back to bed and have my wicked way with you," he says against the corner of his mouth. "Any objections?" 

Tension he hadn't realized he'd been feeling vanishes and he drops his head, laughing at himself. 

"Just don't lose it if I fall asleep on ya." He stands and stretches, watching out of the corner of his eyes how Bucky's dart to the narrow expanse of skin exposed by his shirt riding up. He straightens and smirks at Bucky still gaping at his body like some teenage virgin. "Hey, pal. You gonna take care of your baby, or you gonna gawk?" 

Bucky lunges at him. Steve doesn't even try to pretend he doesn't like it this time when Bucky picks him up and carries him to bed, just wraps his legs around him and smiles into his lips, shoving them away from the wall without looking when Bucky nearly walks them into it. 

Their laughter drowns out the sound of the window slipping open and shut.


	3. Somewhere Over the Rainbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been said war is hell. Bucky loses track of what circle he's on.

**1944**

They're on a routine reconnaissance mission in the woods like they've done a dozen times before. If anyone asked him later about what he witnessed next, he wouldn't be able to tell them much, at least not without feeling like he must be making some of it up. The last thing he knows for certain is he's lying on his stomach on a distant hill, watching Gabe and Jim's backs through his rifle's scope. Then there's a sharp, bright pain in the back of his head. 

After that, things get a little strange. 

His eyes open to bright light. There is cold metal beneath his hands, but when he tries to lift them, he finds he can't move his wrists. Something is binding them. 

He should realize now something has gone very wrong, but his mind feels like his mother's vegetable stew left out too long, too thick and glazed over with a viscous film to do anything with. There's an army marching in the next room, no, the same room, no, not an army but several hideous beasts that walk on two legs. 

One appears like a roach, standing at its full height five feet tall. It scuttles close to him and he can't push words past his slack lips.  _No, no, no._  

Not a sound escapes him. 

Its mouth, two furry pincers, clicks open and shut as its beady eyes study him unblinkingly behind round spectacles. He smells rubbing alcohol on its breath that puffs in quick successions on his face. 

"He is awake," the roach says in accented English. "Is the serum ready?" 

A stout tortoise in a lab coat sidles up to the table. "Ja, mein Herr." 

"Very good. We will begin." 

A buzzing sound. The light becomes blinding. The creatures gather closer. Then a breathtaking pinching, a  _chewing_. . . 

Somebody screams for a long time. 

He opens his eyes again and the same thing happens, over and over. He repeats his name and number so he won't forget, because it would so damn easy to forget. They ignore him for the most part, but once the weasel mocks him. 

"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes," it says in its horrible stringy voice. "Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. What meaning do you think that holds in this place?" Dandruff and flakes of dried blood hail down from its brittle, filthy fur. The roach casts a reproachful look its way and it shuts up for the moment. 

Time passes. He asks for water. He asks for Steve. He gets the water a couple of times. 

 _James B_ _arnes_ _. . . James . . . Barnes . . . James . . ._  

It's not right, somehow. It''ll have to do. 

 _James . . ._  

"Bucky?" 

Who, him? Yes, him. Bucky snaps awake. 

"Oh my God," says an angel in uniform who looks vaguely like Steve.  _Rrrrrip_. Off come the bonds on his chest and legs. He tries to speak but can't quite make the words into words. "It's me," the angel says, answering what he's trying to ask, "It's Steve." 

He smiles. "Steve." 

He's dead, of course. Steve is whole and healthy and here. Bucky's never been happier. But Steve is talking again. 

"That's right. Come on." 

He's moving before his brain tells him he actually can. Steve's arms snake around him and help him sit up. He just looks at him for a moment, cupping his face in his hand, and if he's dead, this is the realest he's felt since he shipped out. 

"I thought you were dead," the man who says he's Steve tells him. 

He takes in this looming stranger who looks like Steve, the solid grip on his shoulder. 

"I thought you were smaller." 

Then Steve is manhandling him off the table and leading him away. 

"I'm imagining this," Bucky muses aloud. The fog in his head clears, everything makes sense now. "They weren't roaches or turtles or weasels at all. You're a soldier." He looks at the man who looks a bit like Steve. "I know you're not Steve Rogers, I . . . It's okay, I was out of it. You from the 107th?" 

Steve shoots him a glance but doesn't slow, steadily whisking him down the hallway. "It's really me, Buck." He explains Dr. Erskine, the serum, and how he came to be in the army and learned Bucky had been taken prisoner. "Told you I was joining up, one way or another." 

Steve did say something like that, he remembers fuzzily. "Tell me something else only Steve would know." 

Steve hesitates, either because he doesn't want to say it or because he's kicking a door down, but then he says, "You wet the bed until you were eight. Your first kiss was Martha Goodwin from down the street. And your last, I hope, was me." 

Bucky stops walking. "My God, Steve.  _You're tall._ " 

Steve just smiles, and they keep moving. 

***

"You lose at strip poker, Buck?" 

He looks up. 

Steve, Morita and Dugan are bundled up in their uniforms and hats indoors and Bucky's in his pants and a-shirt coming from outdoors, snow still crusted on his boots. He surreptitiously swipes a streak of sweat from his face and grins. 

"Sure, and half of Brooklyn owes me money, so I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it." He saunters to the table and kicks out a chair. Steve's eyeballing him, he can feel it, but at least he's not saying anything. "What're we eating?" 

"Filet mignon and roasted asparagus," Dugan drawls, gnawing on a piece of dry biscuit. "Care to join us?" 

"Nah, I'm stuffed on all the caviar," Bucky says, patting his stomach and crossing his eyes. Jim and Dugan laugh a little at that, but Steve zeroes in. 

"Have a bite," he says. He holds out an apple. 

Bucky waves him away. "Thanks but no thanks, Cap. I'm afraid of losing my girlish figure." 

Steve's unamused, wearing that dog-with-a-bone expression Bucky's dreaded being on the receiving end of for most of his life. "When's the last time you ate?" 

"I think I just heard Falsworth call me," Jim says with raised brows, hopping out of his chair and beelining for the door. 

"What do you know, so did I." Dugan is right on his tail. 

"Traitors!" Bucky calls at their backs. He sighs, turning back to Steve. "I'm just not hungry, alright?" 

"You're not sleeping, either." Steve leans in with his earnest eyes and lowers his voice. "Do you need to talk? About what happened?" 

"Goddammit, Steve –" 

He holds up his hands. "I'm not pushing you. Just, if you need to, whenever you're ready, I want you to know you can talk about it to me." Steve drops his gaze, studying the tabletop. "I'm worried about you." 

"I don't know what you're talking about. I feel fantastic." 

"You're faking it." 

Steve isn't accusatory, not angry, not disappointed. Just concerned, and that's the worst part, why Bucky's been so keen on hiding this thing from Steve. Now that Bucky's not avoiding looking directly at him, he sees his eyes are red and bloodshot and his lips have been chewed up until they bled. 

"I . . . Steve, I . . . I just can't, alright?" He casts a look around before chancing holding his hand out. Steve takes it without pause and his grip is so tight Bucky's eyes widen for a split second. 

"Okay," Steve whispers. "It's okay, Buck. Just don't lock me out. Don't lock  _me_  out." The door opens and a couple guys breeze by. Steve jerks his hand back and clears his throat. "I want you to sleep in my room tonight," he says sotto voce. 

Bucky stiffens at that, but then realizes Steve hasn't been getting any sleep because he's been worried about  _him_  not getting any sleep. So he nods. 

"Okay, Steve. Whatever you want." Steve looks a little relieved at that, so he decides to push it. "You know, I had trouble sleeping without you, first few weeks I was gone. Know what I'd do?" 

Steve doesn't. 

"I'd talk to you. In my head, I mean. Steve, d'you take your medicine? Steve, you're hogging all the blankets, you little punk. Stevie, baby, I'm so lonesome this side of the bed without you. I'd just keep talking to you till I knocked myself out. Sometimes I'd bunch up a shirt and pretend it was you, press it under my chin like how we used to sleep." He grins at the red blush crawling up Steve's neck. "Haven't seen that in a while. So tonight, huh? Think we could . . .?" 

"Count sheep?" Steve hides a smile behind a mug of coffee, but his eyes say he's got him. "I'm going drinking with the fellas tonight. It's good for morale. You want to come along?" 

What he wants is to take Steve and run into the woods and never be heard from again, to taint him with his scent so no one will ever so much as look at him again, to tear something apart with his bare hands– 

What he says is, "Sure, why not?" 

***

Bucky would be sorry for every single time he ever flaunted going with a girl in front of Steve if he could feel anything right now other than red-hot jealousy. 

She's a stunner, the type who would have been too good even for Bucky on his best day. Scarlet lips and these dark bedroom eyes that might have made him weak at the knees if they hadn't been turned on Steve. And honest, guileless Steve who always knows what he wants is giving her the eyes right back. 

He could punch glass. 

"You think you had enough, buddy?" the bartender asks him. 

"When I'm dead," he says, or tries to say. His bites his tongue. The bartender sighs and moves down the bar. 

He recalls a story he'd read once about Job, about how he'd sit on the ground and tear at his hair and clothes and scream at the sky, and nothing came of it. He did everything God wanted and his family still died. 

Bucky went to war like a good boy. He always made sure his dates got home safe and was sweet to his mother. Yet he still has waking nightmares of being eaten alive by talking roaches and wildebeests. 

Steve's right there, real as life, and still Bucky has to watch him turn away from him. He thinks it'd be easier, maybe, if Steve was dead, because if Steve was dead Bucky would follow right behind and fuck whatever the good book has to say about that, but as he's alive, he has to live for him and suffer even if he's not looking. 

Someone steps up to his side. He doesn't look up from where he's resting his head against the bar. 

"Steve, if you tell me I've had too many I'll spit in yer eye." 

"To tell you the truth I was checking you were alive, but I'll round him up for you if you'd rather . . .?" 

He lifts his head, reluctantly. Ah, the devastating hussy. 

He scans the room like he always does when Steve's around until he's spotted him. Sure enough, he's with the boys, smiling at something one of them said as they raise their glasses in a toast. 

He means to laugh but it probably comes out as a groan. "No, forget it." He sits up straight and is surprised to find he's not swaying with vertigo at this point. "Feel like a corpse, but I think most coroners would deem me alive. Kick me off the table, tell me to scram." 

She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "You  _look_ like a corpse." She takes a handkerchief out of her purse and slips it to him under the bar. "Your eyes, James," she says softly. 

He touches his hand to his cheek and it comes away soaked, not just damp. 

"Christ," he mutters. "Excuse the expression, ma'am." 

She nods and looks away out of courtesy. 

It's not tears, he realizes with only a little relief; he's soaked in sweat head to toe. His clothes feel plastered to his skin and he's too hot and cold all at once, trembling like he's being ravaged by fever. 

Peggy glances at him, but then she looks again and her expression changes from one of secondhand embarrassment and pity to one of concern. "Are you feeling alright? I think it would be best if you saw a doctor." She stands and touches his arm. "I'll go with you." 

He's already shaking his head. "No. No doctors. 'M drunk 's'all." It doesn't escape him he has to put on the slur. There are near twenty dead soldiers scattered atop the bar in front of him and he's sober as a judge. 

"James, you look like you're about to fall out at any moment." There must be something in his expression because she softens. "Alright. But you're going to get some rest, understood? You're running yourself dry." 

He's about to roll his eyes and say something smart despite that she's trying to help him, but then Steve is there and suddenly it doesn't matter that Steve apparently doesn't want him anymore, Bucky's still his, and right now the only thing he needs is to be close to him.

Steve lets out a grunt of surprise when Bucky walks up and leans his full weight on him, but recovers quickly. He wraps an arm around his waist and nods to Peggy. 

"I'll get him to bed," he says. "Tell the guys I'm beat, I'll see them tomorrow." 

She nods. "Of course, Steve." She looks at Bucky. An understanding dawns on her face then, seeing the way his entire demeanor has shifted once Steve appeared. It may be a trick of the light but for a moment he could swear she smiles sadly at him. "I hope you get well soon, Sergeant Barnes." 

"Thank you, ma'am," he says humbly, utterly mollified with Steve's smell thick in his nose. Somewhere, distantly, he knows he shouldn't be rubbing his face into the dip between Steve's neck and his shoulder in front of people, and in another, equally blurry section of his mind he registers that everyone in the room is staring at them. The most lucid part of him wants to yell at them to go get fucked. 

Steve bids Peggy goodnight and then steers him outside. If Peggy notices that the way to Bucky's quarters is in the opposite direction from where they're headed she doesn't say anything. 

The cool, fresh night air is a balm on his overheated skin. But almost instantly, he adjusts to it. Fresh sweat oozes down his back. His head is clear, at least. 

"Bucky," Steve says, too calmly, "Did they give you something?" 

His instinct is to play dumb. "Who?" 

"Don't." Steve's expression is tortured. "Did they inject you with something? Answer me, that's an order." 

Fury flares up in him. "That's not fair." 

"None of this is fair," Steve agrees. "It doesn't matter. Bucky, I think you're withdrawing from something and I'd like to know what it is so the doctors here can help you." 

"So they can lock me up? Make me a science experiment?" He backs away. "That might sound agreeable to you, big boy, but I'm not game. I don't want any doctor to –" His eyes screw shut for a second. "No doctors," he says. "And I don't know what the fuck they gave me, either. I was a little too busy screaming in agony to ask to read the fine print." 

Steve flinches like he'd punched him. 

"Fine," he says, voice strangled, "But . . . one thing at a time. You need sleep." He closes the distances between them and turns him around, starts them walking again. 

Steve's room is no bigger or luxurious than the one Bucky shares with the other men, but it's invaluable in that they can finally be truly alone together. 

He strips out of his sweaty clothes immediately and changes into Steve's offered shorts. Then Steve bids him to sit on his bed while he wipes the sweat from him with a cloth. 

"I'll wash your hair and make sure you get a shower in the morning," Steve promises. "Right now I think the most pressing thing you need is sleep. You think?" 

Bucky just nods, too grateful for Steve's proximity to argue. 

Steve must take his silence for sullenness, because he continues, "Think of all the times I got a bloody nose or I was laid up in bed with the flu and you took care of me. This is like that, only now, you need to let me take care of you." 

"You're not mentioning how you always bitched when it was the other way around," Bucky mutters, relaxing again already with Steve's skin only separated from his own by less than an inch of rag. "Acted like I was insulting your honor or somethin' by feeding you some damn soup." 

"Do you see my aversion now, at least?" Steve tosses the rag into a corner and then freezes, his eyes widening marginally.  _Poor dumbass_ , Bucky thinks fondly. He's only just fully realized there's no one else around. Steve leans in with a little aw-shucks smile that's all Steve and kisses him, then again for good measure, then once for luck, then one more time just because he can. 

"Sweet dreams, Bucky." He tugs out the sheets for him and tucks them up to his waist and then starts to steps back, but Bucky grips his shirt so hard his knuckles are white. 

"Don't leave me," he blurts. 

Steve makes a soothing noise at the back of his throat. "Not going anywhere, just getting out of these clothes. You get settled." 

Bucky does as he's told, and then Steve's sliding in beside him and a wave of hot emotion drowns out anything else that's transpired in the last year and it's just him and Steve. Bucky's eyes are closed, his mouth is open helplessly against Steve's cheek, and they're back in Brooklyn in their lumpy, old, wonderful bed and there's a leak in the ceiling and life is perfect. 

"Steve," he whispers, hands fumbling over all that warm skin. "Hey, Steve." 

"Sleep," Steve reminds him sternly, but his voice is ragged. "We got time." 

"Don't know if I can," Bucky says honestly, but he forces his breathing to slow, practically a master at it as he is from all the years of trying to get Steve's rapid breathing to slack to something normal. 

He thinks about those nights, how they'd start out with their chests pressed together, just like they are now, so Steve could try to match the rhythm of Bucky's lungs, and gradually, after Steve had fallen asleep, Bucky would press his ear to his chest to listen to his heartbeat. 

Steve, bless him, falls asleep almost immediately. Bucky gently rubs the dark bags under Steve's eyes and thinks about kissing them, but doesn't want to risk waking him. Instead he shuffles down the bed till he's eye level with Steve's chest, and then he leans his ear to his heart and listens in. It's strong and steady, pounding like a drum. That's how he stays for hours, until the pre-dawn light filters royal blue through the lonely window and Steve mutters something in his sleep. 

"What was that?" Bucky asks, an amused smile playing at his lips. 

"Come in f'm the cold, Buck," he repeats. 

"I'm right here, babydoll." 

Steve's eyes open. They light up on seeing him. "Bucky." 

"Hi, baby." He sits up and leans down to kiss him softly. "Glad to see me?" 

"You know I am, Buck." 

"You have a good dream?" 

"Yeah," Steve says. He's lying, Bucky can always tell when he's lying. "How 'bout you?" 

"Yeah," he lies. He knows Steve knows. 

They share a smile because they're both fucked up idiots. 

He feels Steve's hand reach for his and he instinctively takes it. 

"I haven't gotten a chance to say it yet," Steve says, "but I missed you so bad I thought I'd die from it, Buck." 

Bucky looks down at their conjoined hands. "I thought I did die from it, once or twice." 

"Mrs. Howerton's old tomcat sat in our window for a few days after she died until he just wasted away from heartsickness, you remember? That was me for weeks. David and John from down the hall checked in on me now and then to make sure I hadn't kicked it just from aching for you." 

There's such love shining in Steve's eyes Bucky bows his head, a little ashamed of himself. "Steve, I . . . I wasn't in my right mind last night," he admits. "I thought for a minute there, maybe . . ." 

He doesn't want to say the rest, but Steve nudges him, so he sighs it out. 

"Maybe you were sweet on Agent Carter." 

"What if I was?" 

 _Am I still on that table?_  Bucky thinks, flushed ice cold. 

"Bucky." Steve turns his hand over and kisses his palm before pressing it to his cheek. "You really think it'd change anything? I like Peggy, that's true. She's a great woman, brilliant, attractive. But she's not you." 

"It'd be the smart thing," Bucky says, not daring to meet Steve's eyes. "You could marry her, you know. Take the easy way out. In five years' time you'll forget about me. Wait and see that you don't." 

"I ain't waiting and seeing anything," Steve says sharply, Brooklyn vowels slipping out. "Last I checked you were my best guy and I was . . . You gonna make me say it?" 

Bucky's breath hitches. "Yeah." 

"I was your baby," Steve says quietly. "I still am, aren't I?" 

"Yes," Bucky whispers. 

"There, you see?" Steve leans his forehead against his and runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair. "When we got together nothing changed between us except we never took our hands off each other, and even that wasn't much of a leap. But I know you still stopped going with anyone else after a while. I never asked you to, though. Because I knew at the end of the day you were going to come home to me and no one else mattered." 

"You sleep with her?" Bucky asks, unable to help himself. 

"No. I'd never, not with anyone, not without asking you if you were alright with it. I know we never talked about what we were doing, Buck, but this is the real deal. It was never just fooling around for me. If one of us was a woman there'd be rings on our fingers, believe it." 

"Steve." This time the wetness on his cheeks  _is_  tears. 

Steve licks them away, then, seeing the look on Bucky's face, lies back on the bed. "C'mere. You up for me showing you?" 

Bucky's not sure if he is, heat swelling up in him so scorching he feels on fire, but he crawls over him and says, "Show me. Show me who's your daddy, baby," and he loses his mind for an indeterminate period of time. 

When he comes to, he's on top of Steve and rutting into him as hard as he can. His jaw and hipbones are sore and Steve's whimpering and drooling onto the pillow, but Bucky doesn't notice. 

He's too busy staring at the red and purple bites peppered from Steve's neck to his ass. 

"Jesus wept!" As carefully as he can, he pulls out, wincing as come drips out of Steve's ass alongside his cock. 

"No," Steve whines, reaching back for him. Then he recovers himself and leans up one his elbows to look at him. "What's wrong?" 

"What's wrong?" Bucky echoes incredulously, lightly tracing a raw-looking bite with his thumb. "You look like an assault-and-battery victim and I'm still going to town on you." 

Steve slumps back down onto his stomach, and for one wretched, horrible moment Bucky thinks he's crying, but quickly he realizes he's laughing. 

"You just now notice?" Steve rolls over languidly onto his back, and Bucky gapes at how red and swollen his lips, nipples and cock are. Steve sees him looking and smirks, stroking his dripping erection. "The serum enhanced a lot more than it said on the tin," he says huskily. "You already made me come four times and I'm still raring to go." He throws his head back and his hand moves faster, blurring up and down, and he balls his other into a fist and bites it. "Please, daddy, I need you," he moans piteously. 

Bucky's stomach rumbles. 

"Sweet Christ," he breathes, dropping down to his elbows. He bats Steve's hand away and muscle memory has him swallowing him down to the root, reveling in the shout bouncing against the walls. He pauses to swirl his tongue around the head and then dip into the slit, just savoring it, and then bobs his head a few times, and it's not long at all before Steve is spilling into his mouth with a sigh of his name. He swallows it all. It's bitterer than he remembers, a coppery taste . . . With a sinking feeling, he pulls off and a string of blood connects his lips to Steve's cock for a second before breaking off. 

"Steve," he says loudly, sitting up. 

"Hmm?" Steve folds his arms behind his head and smiles goofily at him. 

"You're bleeding." 

His eyebrows furrow and he looks down at himself, running a cursory check with his hand. "No, I'm not, Buck." 

Bucky starts to protest, but then, when he opens his mouth, he notices a sharp, scraping pain in his gums. He swipes his tongue across the area and feels a hard point poking through just behind his incisors. Like a new tooth's trying to come in. He sticks his tongue out and sees a little pool of fresh blood welled up on the tip. 

He doesn't question how he can see the color of it in the dark. 

"Must have bit myself," he says. 

Steve gets a glint in his eyes and just as Bucky sees what he's going to do he kicks him off-balance so he topples onto him. 

"Let me get that for you," Steve says sweetly, then sucks his tongue into his mouth. 

Bucky doesn't do anything but go boneless and let Steve do what he wants. He hasn't felt this good and strange in equal measure in his life, but he thinks he might like it, or be able to get used to it, anyway. There's a pleasant buzzing his head, and everything has a faint glow to it. 

It occurs to him he should tell Steve they shouldn't do this, at least not for a while, until this shit that makes him fucking black out while they're fucking is out of his system. 

Steve laughs, rubbing off against his thigh, already ready for more. 

He can't bring himself to say it. 

"We got an hour before we have to be outta bed," Steve says hopefully. 

Bucky huffs a laugh. "I've created a monster," he says, letting Steve roll him onto his back and kiss his way down his stomach. 

Steve grins at him. "Buddy, you got no idea." 


	4. White Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long-term effects of the drugs manifest themselves just in time for the holidays.

The shifts in Bucky's personality that occur over the next couple months are so subtle Steve doubts anyone else notices. 

Steve notices. 

Bucky is a ball of energy some days, and that's not exactly new. But there's a brightness and a shiftiness to his eyes that had never been there before. When he's in action, it seems less of his own volition and more like someone else is jerking his strings, working him into a frenzy whether he's plotting strategy or brushing his teeth. 

But where he's sometimes manic, at other times he's nearly lethargic. He had never been quiet for too long back home unless something was troubling him, and something is almost always troubling him these days. His old charm seems to be a switch he can turn on and off at will. Steve wishes for a manual on ways he could help him without making Bucky hide the truth deeper and deeper inside himself. 

Bucky's newfound extra energy comes out in a variety of ways. 

Once, he tries to get in a fistfight just for the sake of fighting, but no one wants to beat on the guy whose brain was possibly tinkered with during his time as a prisoner of war not long enough ago. This pisses him off something awful, and Steve finally acquiesces to roughhousing in what they now consider their room. Bucky comes away with a black eye, a sore ass, and a smile. 

He takes to running around camp. The men begin gathering to watch him, placing bets on how long he can go for. 

Gabe whistles low one morning. "Your boy ought to try for the Olympics once we get this war won," he tells Steve as they lean up against a fence and watch Bucky zip by going the speed of an automobile. "I've never  _seen_ a man run that fast." 

"I don't know," Steve says. "You must never have seen a fella on a date with his girl realize he's late to a date with the other one." 

They laugh about it, but Steve starts to watch Bucky more closely. 

Even as he physically has more vitality than ever, socially he seems more withdrawn, his countenance pale. He misses opportunities to crack jokes and his smiles are forced. 

Steve assumes he's upset and decides it's best not to aggravate him. He'll come around when he's ready. 

Once, a restaurant whose owners they'd sheltered one night during a bombing raid shows their thanks by treating them to a real dinner. They have the place to themselves for the night, and the boys joke and tell stories from home. Dernier gets sloppy drunk and sings the Marseillaise on top of a table. 

Steve watches Bucky. 

He resigns himself to him not eating, as usual. Unsurprisingly, Bucky politely turns down the peas and the sweetbread. But his eyes get round when they bring out the steak. 

"Are you going to eat what's on your plate or Barnes?" Jim jokes from beside him. "Try the sweet potato, Cap. It won't bite back." 

Steve, flustered, looks down at his plate like it's the most interesting thing in the world. When he looks up again Bucky's gnawing on the bone with single-minded focus. Steve smiles, relieved for a moment. Maybe Bucky is going to be alright. 

"Hey, Buck, you want mine?" 

Bucky's eyes dart up to his, and for a split second, Steve hardly recognizes them. Or he does, but he's never seen them quite so feral, except maybe that early morning they went at it half a dozen times and Bucky at first couldn't do much more than growl and fuck. 

Then Bucky blinks. He looks at the picked-clean bone in his hand like he doesn't know how it got there and shakes his head with a sheepish smile. 

"Was hungrier than I thought, I guess." 

Steve pushes his plate towards him. "You sure?" 

Bucky rolls his eyes at him and shoves it back. "Positive. Eat your dinner, Steve." 

Steve eats everything but the steak. After everyone else is full and settling in for more stories and comradery, Steve pretends not to see Bucky sneaking glances at his plate. Finally, blink and you miss it, Steve shoots him a look and winks, pushing his plate across the table to him. Bucky scarfs it down in about twenty seconds. 

They don't talk about it again. 

***

"Huh. We must have rats." 

Steve holds up one of Bucky's undershirts laid out to be washed. There's a hole with a teeth-shaped edge chewed into the neck. 

"Oh. Huh." Bucky intently folds his share of their clothes and separates them into piles. 

Steve gives him a look, but Bucky doesn't seem up to talk about it. He sighs and carries his stack out to be washed. "I'll go see about getting some traps," he calls back. 

As soon as his back is turned, Bucky pulls the collar of his undershirt up and continues to gnaw on it. 

***

Steve, still coming down, flexes his hand in front of his face. "I'm sensing a bad habit developing here, old man." 

Bucky freezes where he's started to gnaw on the fingers of his other hand. "Dunno what you're talking about," he says, muffled around Steve's thumb. 

Steve sighs. His own hands he doesn't mind, because he’ll heal in no time, but he knows if he's biting him it's because Bucky's are already just as bad. Taking up Bucky's free hand he finds he's right. Small bites that are going to bruise are scattered across his palm. The skin's not broken, so he doesn't have to worry about that, but he suspects it'll be irritating to hold anything for a while. 

Steve finds it cute when he does it to him, though, he'd have to admit. Like Bucky's a puppy with its first chew toy. He even lets out a satisfied little growl now and then, jerking his head back and forth with Steve's skin between his teeth. 

"You're my Santa Claus, baby boy," Bucky slurs, nuzzling his wrist. "Gave me exactly what I wanted for Christmas." His face flushed, eyes glazed, he rolls his hips, softening cock sliding through his own mess on Steve's stomach. It yanks a grunt from Steve. 

Bucky licks his teeth and peers down at him, suddenly wary. "Not hurting you, was I?" 

"It'd take more than a little nibbling to hurt me," Steve laughs. "How about you?" He dips his fingers down to where they're still connected. Bucky shudders as he lightly dips a fingertip into him. "I didn't hurt you?" 

"Would take a little more than a couple rounds to hurt me," Bucky retorts. "I'll tell you what." He lays his head on Steve's shoulder, taking his hand with him and continuing to bite self-comfortingly. He says it so quietly Steve thinks he must have misheard and so doesn't think anything of it. "My  _fuckin'_ _gums_ hurt." 

*** 

Though they all hear the story so many times they all have their own near-photographic memory of the incident, Falsworth is the one who spots the man in the woods. 

"I stepped out a moment for a cigarette, and it's a bit awkward to just stand around in the cold, you know, so I started to walk. It was a frightfully cold night but I read somewhere the cold can be good for one's health. I was barely within the tree line when I felt, well, a presence, for lack of a better description. I looked about me and I saw a person standing there a few meters off. I drew my gun. Aside from precaution, he'd startled me quite a bit." 

Bucky starts to nod off where his chin rests on his hand. He's already heard this almost word-for-word account four times. 

Steve nudges him. 

_You're too serious_ , Bucky mouths grouchily. Steve shrugs, but his eyes are laughing. Damn him. He doesn't think there's anything more to Falsworth's story than the rest of them, he just doesn't want to suffer alone. 

"What did he look like?" Steve asks dutifully. Playing along for Bucky's sake. Bucky turns away so he can roll his eyes and smile into his hand. 

"His face was hidden in shadow, I'm afraid," Falsworth says, chagrined. "But he had unusually long hair for a man, and a strong build. I couldn't make out what sort of clothing he wore, just that it was dark, probably black. There looked to be–" 

_Knives_ , Bucky mouths at Steve. 

"–  _k_ _nives_ strapped on his person, dozens of them, glinting in the moonlight. I asked him who he was and what business he had walking around the woods at that hour. He had something of a Russian accent when he spoke, I thought, at least at the time. Now I'm not sure. Damn those Russians, in any case. He said, 'What business do  _you_  have walking around the woods at this hour? I think it's a little past your bedtime, don't you?' The nerve! I was about to tell him where he could go, but as I came closer he stepped behind a tree. I saw his shadow and followed it. I gave it something of a chase for a good half mile, but then I realized it was my own shadow I was following and the man had slipped away. I looked again after dawn, but the snowfall had covered his footsteps completely. Trickiest thing. What do you make of it?" 

"Could be a spy," Steve says politely. He nudges Bucky's knee under the table. "Or a ghost." 

Falsworth glares at him. "I bloody well know what I saw, Captain." He stands huffily. "I'll ask Dugan what he thinks." 

"You should  _d_ _efinitely_  ask Dugan what he thinks," Bucky calls after him. Steve holds it together just long enough for Falsworth to get out of earshot before he's turning red in the face and falling out of his chair. 

"I think it's a little past–" Bucky starts to say in an imitation of what he thinks a Russian accent is, his face dead serious, but he can't finish because he's laughing too hard. 

*** 

Peggy Carter would have been low on the list of people Bucky would have chosen to be beholden to, if he'd had a choice. 

He's in the meeting room looking over the plans for an upcoming mission when she walks in. She's surprised to see him. 

"You're studying late," she notes with a smile. "I seem to have forgotten my gloves. What will it be next?" She takes them up from the table, gives him a nod and turns to go. Something makes her pause, and she turns back to him with a thoughtful look. "Would you like to have a drink with me, Sergeant Barnes?" 

He yawns, wiping at his eyes. He's lost track of the time. That seems to be happening more and more lately. "Sounds like a plan." Not like it'll affect him in the morning, anyway. 

He crosses the room and opens the door for her, but then Peggy is gone and he's stepping into the Barnes' kitchen to the smell of his mother's famous pot roast. 

"Ma?" 

"James Barnes, you're letting the cold in," Winifred scolds without looking up from the stove. The sleeves of her dress have been pushed to her elbows and her hair is done up save a few little pieces that have come out and stand straight out like little curlicues. "And take your shoes off. Stomping around like–" She spins around. She sees his face and a hand flutters to her mouth. 

"No," she whispers. "Is Steve . . .?" 

He can only shake his head. She's had to ask him this often enough he knows what she's getting at. 

She releases a whoosh of breath and puts a hand to her chest. "You gave me an awful scare! You look like you've been to war, Bucky. Your eyes . . ." She takes another deep breath and stirs the pot and tastes it, then beckons him over. "Come here, darling. Taste this for me. Do you think it needs more water?" 

Slowly, he walks further into the room. His feet feel like lead, and as an afterthought, he kicks his boots off. He steps up to the stove and just looks at her for a moment. She beckons him to take the spoon impatiently and he does, giving it a taste. 

"It's delicious," he tells her. 

She nods. "That's what I thought, but you know your father will complain if there's too much sugar. " _It's too sweet_ ,'" she says, mimicking his gruff voice. "' _I'm not eating candy-coated roast._ '" 

He looks over his shoulder, but there's nothing more remarkable than their front door. 

"How's he doing?" his mother is saying, rubbing his back. 

"Steve?" She nods, eyebrows raised. "He's . . . better." 

She smiles, leaning her head against his shoulder a second. "Thank God. We were all praying for him before we went to bed last night. I was so afraid when you walked in here, Bucky, I thought . . ." She shakes her head. "Well, never mind what I thought. He's a fighter, that one. And who but the Lord knows? He may outlive us all." She turns back to her roast. "Have you gotten him a present yet?" 

Present? 

"No, ma'am," he says. "Not yet." 

She raises her eyebrows, surprised. "You'd better get to it. You're running out of time." She turns and touches his cheek. "But you've been under stress lately. If you'd like, Becca and I could run out tomorrow evening and get him something for you? We're getting him an easel." She puts a finger to her lips conspiratorially. "But you didn't hear that from me." 

He starts to tell her they already got Steve an easel five years ago, but a chair scrapes the floor behind him and he turns to look. 

"I hate algebra," a roughly seventeen-year-old Rebecca mutters, setting her textbook down on the table with a thump. 

"Bucky will help you. Go help your sister, Bucky," Winifred says, shooing him away. 

Rebecca had a growth spurt two years ago that brought her up to only an inch shorter than Bucky, but now she barely reaches his chest. 

Bucky falls into a chair. 

Rebecca stares at her homework for a few minutes, chewing on the end of a pencil, and then huffs and gives the paper to Bucky. 

He stares at the page, not really taking in what he's seeing. Then he notices the date. 

December 16th, 1938. 

"Bucky? Sweetheart?" 

He looks up. Rebecca and their mother are staring at him. His mother has her hands on his shoulders. 

"You should go home, honey. You don't have to stay for dinner. Go be with Steve. I know you're still worried about him." She kisses the side of his head, and then jerks him by the chin so he has to look at her. "And get some sleep! You look like you've aged overnight." 

"Pop says he's going to drag you over here by the ear and lock you in your old room until you get a full night's rest, you know, without Steve to keep you up," Rebecca says, smiling at him too innocently. He scowls at her; that, at least, is halfway normal. The little imp knows too much. 

"He meant it, too," Winifred says. "So you'd better listen to me. You and Steve had better be all rested up so you can eat my Christmas dinner." 

He stands, and she straightens his lapels. 

"Where'd you get this?" she asks him, really looking at his clothes for the first time. 

Lying to his mother leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but he doesn't know what else to say. Well, Ma, I'm really an ocean away fighting a war that doesn't exist yet and all I got for my trouble was this lousy uniform jacket? "It was Steve's old man's. My old coat's had it, so I slipped it on. Steve said it was alright." 

She nods. "Well. You won't have to wear this one much longer." She winks at him. "Go get some rest, my boy. Let me know as soon as anything changes.  _If_  anything changes," she amends, crossing herself. 

"'Course, Ma." He pecks her cheek and turns to the door. 

Then reality sets in. 

There's a good chance he'll walk out of here and step into a Brooklyn afternoon, and there'll be no place to go but back to Steve. 

Then he thinks,  _Well, isn't that what I'd do anyway_? 

He opens the door and catches Agent Carter in his arms. 

"Oh my God!" She half laughs, half stares in wonder. "What just happened!" 

"I . . . I don't know." He looks back, but his parents' apartment is gone. He has the strangest feeling, like he wants to get sick and run a few miles all at once, wooziness with a kick, a dizzy energy. 

"One moment you're standing before me holding the door and then . . ." She looks him up and down, squeezing his biceps, convincing herself that he's real. She steps past him through the open doorway. She seems an odd combination of relieved and disappointed when she turns around and sees she's still in the same place. "I watched you vanish. Simply disappear into thin air. I almost doubt my senses. I – Where are your shoes?" 

"Please don't tell Steve," is all he can think to say in response to that.  

"James, I –" 

"Please." 

"James." She shakes her head, holding a hand up as though she wants to touch his shoulder but unsure if she should. Finally she holds it up in a placating gesture instead. "I assure you, that is the last thing on my mind. Has this happened before?" 

"Sure, fizzling in and out of rooms is all the rage back home. Only way to travel." 

"I'm not sure we should joke about this." 

"Who's joking?" 

"I just saw you disappear and reappear like magic. Where did you go?" 

"My parents' place," he says quietly. "Five years ago." 

"This is amazing." He watches the gears turn in her head. "Our scientists have been researching scientific basis for time travel for years. They've never even considered a, a  _biological_ factor. With this kind of breakthrough, we could learn –" Her excited smile vanishes at his pinched, drawn expression. "Oh, I see." 

"I'm not sure I can go through that again and come out in one piece, ma'am," he says, tapping his temple. "But I see the logic in what you're saying. This is . . ." 

"A big deal," she says. 

"A  _huge_  deal, maybe. Just. I just need some time to think it over." 

She nods. "I understand. I do." She holds out her hand again, and this time Bucky moves into it. She smiles up at him. "Don't worry, James. I'll figure things out. It's what I'm good at. You take the time you need, and if and when you're ready, you come see me."

He nods. "Just promise me you won't tell Steve," he says. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. "I think that's something you need to tell him yourself, don't you?" 

He tells her he will. At some point. 

Eventually. 

He never gets the chance. 

***

The hearse is stark against the white world. It moves as slow as the tide, stately in a vulgar way. Bystanders stop what they’re doing, shoveling snow out of their driveways, idling on the curb, and turn to watch it pass, same as any rubberneckers, unaware of the significance of this moment in history. Of what it all means.  

Of the grief burning a hole in the boy trailing the hearse on his bike. 

He won’t look at anyone. He stands stoically as a museum’s suit of armor before the grave. His mother stands between him and his father and carefully doesn’t touch him, but stands close enough to remind him he’s not alone. 

His father had said the unforgivable.  _There was hardly a day of that boy's life he wasn't sick, son_ _._ _You knew what you were getting into the first time you said hello._ _G_ _et ahold of yourself._ _It's t_ _ime to move on._  

It only took three other pallbearers to do the job. Steve was so skinny. No matter what he ate, nothing could stick to those skinny chicken bones. 

Piece of shit, to go and die like that. He'd warned him. He'd  _warned_  him. 

He slips on ice, hits the ground hard. A steaming, impersonal splash of red on white. He pushes to his feet but everything’s gone so slow, so still, now that his center of balance is missing. 

The wood’s the rough kind, unpolished. A splinter slides into his cheek but it doesn’t hurt, not like the rest of him. His arms, aching, stretched around the coffin, his blunt fingernails digging into its sides. Insides, hollow. 

“Bucky.” It’s his mother, her hand warm on his shoulder. She's crying. “You have to let go now.” 

I can't.  _I_ _can't._ He can’t say it because he’s screaming. 

“Steve.” His voice is foreign, frightening. He sounds like the little boy his father would have boxed in the ears for sounding so weak. He no longer cares. He is weak. “Stevie, baby. I didn’t mean it, Steve. I didn’t mean it.” 

A moment like a year lost in a dark forest drags by, and then his father and Father O'Connor haul him out of the grave and walk him back to the side. His knees give out and the two men hold him up. He takes his punishment masochistically, eyes fixed on the coffin being lowered, and then, when it’s sunken out of sight, he struggles. 

“Let me go,” he says feverishly, trying to throw the men’s grips off his arms. “ _Let me go_! Steve! Steve!” He spits and punches blindly. The world is cold and ugly and barren. All these strangers stare purposefully away. Someone is crying obnoxiously. He jerks hard, desperate for a knife, for the sick swipe of metal on flesh, his own, his father’s, the priest's, the weeping stranger’s. 

His teeth sink into someone's arm and blood floods his mouth and then there is panic. 

Purses litter the ground and women run straight out of their heels. Two men run into each other and fall down unconscious. He watches himself as though he's standing across the street. He looks older, stockier, like a stranger. Blood covers him from nose to chest and his hands are sunk up to the wrists in Father O'Connor's neck. Something is wrong with his posture, or his spine. His hands jerk back and blood gushes from the old priest's neck, painting everything impossibly red. 

In the confusion, the coffin is tilted at an odd angle in the grave. The top falls open and Steve's mangled body rolls over in the snow. 

Bucky freezes with a hunk of the priest's flesh clutched in his hand. His hand loses feeling, in fact his whole left arm is numb, and the gory skin drops, falling on the dead man's neck where is had just been ripped out. 

There are hunks missing from Steve's cheeks and one of his eyes is gone, the socket too damaged for the undertaker to fix it with a glass one. A pink bed of scar tissue is in its place instead, a human crater made of Steve's face. They patched up his throat as best as they could, but there wasn't much to work with. The one suit he owned was worn out and the elbows had holes in them so they'd dressed him in one of Bucky's, had it tailored to fit. Steve used to tease him about that suit. Called it his pimp suit. He'd hated it. 

Bucky vomits onto his shoes. 

Someone shakes his shoulder. 

"Buck." 

He looks back. The tall, broad man he had assumed to be his father wears Steve's face. 

Bucky grabs hold of his shirt with a hand he doesn't recognize and sobs. "Why didn't you listen to me?" 

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "I'm still not giving up. I won't." 

"Bucky, please wake up. It's just a nightmare, sweetheart. Please wake up. C'mon. Look at me. I'm alright. Please look at me." 

He opens his eyes, finding himself in the bed in Steve's room. Steve is hovering over him, near tears, desperately trying to calm him down and panicking because he can't. He's bitten his arm and a thin trickle of blood is dried in a strip down to the inside of his elbow. 

It figures the first time he's been able to sleep since the table he has a vicious nightmare that had been so vivid it felt like a memory. 

Their dog tags have gotten tangled together in a knot while they slept and the chain digs into his neck uncomfortably. Steve works it loose one-handed, his other petting Bucky's hair as he speaks to him, gentle, nonsense things Bucky doesn't really hear. 

"You didn't do anything to me, Buck. See? I'm just fine. I'm right here with you. Bucky? Bucky?" 

It takes him about half an hour to stop screaming. 

***

The following day is New Year's Eve, and also the day of their next mission: capturing Zola. 

The Roach. 

Bucky's developed a sort of sick anticipation of seeing him again. What did he look like without antennae? He suspects he'll be disappointed rather than relieved to find the creature of his every waking nightmare is a chump he could chuck into a trash can in his sleep, one arm tied behind his back. 

He couldn't sleep again after the nightmare, but that was to be expected. Instead he'd stared at the fresh bandage on Steve's arm until it dissolved in his blurred vision and resembled a block of ice, or a bare skull. 

Once he'd stopped screaming he'd gone somewhere else in his head for a while. He was distantly aware of Steve cleaning up the bite and telling him some stupid story about when he'd broken up a fight during one of his Captain America shows and gotten cut up much worse, and it still healed completely within hours. 

When Steve had come back to bed, Bucky had gotten up without a word and curled up on the floor facing the wall. Steve left him alone for a few minutes, long enough for him to think he'd gotten his way, before he'd crept up and laid down in front of him. Bucky started to snap at him to get away, but stopped himself at the last second. He'd already bit the man till he bled; why not let him win? Steve stared at him for a long time as though to say, it's alright, I'm here. Eventually his eyes had drifted shut and Bucky had nothing to do but stare at that damning bandage that was really just for his sake, so he wouldn't have to look at the indentations his teeth made. 

Adrenaline feels different, now. It doesn't leave him shaking and giddy like it used to. Instead it narrows his mind to one singular push: fulfill the mission; fulfill the mission; fulfill the mission. Upper level reasoning leaves him until he can only think vaguely, chanting like a countdown:  _shoot_ _bad guys; protect Steve and the men; survive._  

It takes a minute to break through his focus to process that his feet have been swept from under him. He only manages to grab hold of something as a mindless reflex. Stunned, he watches Steve climb out after him, yelling for him to hold on. Sure, he'll do that. 

Time spins out into infinity as he clings to the side of the train. His mind is going a million miles a second; he wants to snap at Steve to get his ass back inside, he wants to take his outstretched hand and get inside himself. An animal desperation hazes over everything, or else maybe he'd do like they do in the movies and tell Steve he loves him. 

The moment can't last forever. 

The rail breaks away from the train. A wordless yell follows him down into the cold of winter's bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a fairly gory dream sequence near the end of this chapter where Bucky dreams Steve has died. Just a heads-up because it may be upsetting. Also, I don't actually remember when exactly Bucky "died," so there's a little canon divergence for ya.


	5. As Time Goes By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve struggles to adapt to the twenty-first century without Bucky. He isn't as alone as he thinks.

**O** **c** **t** **o** **b** **e** **r**   **31** ,  **2** **0** **1** **4**

Margaret is backed into a corner. The back of her head strikes against a shelf and she staggers wildly, her legs buckling as though she might pass out. She fumbles for the light switch, cursing, saliva pouring from her mouth as she desperately babbles and grasps for something to use to defend herself from the thing lurking in the corner. As she stumbles and moans the low growl grows louder. Only a faint glow of eyes and the traces of bared fangs can be seen in the near-total darkness. 

"No," she cries, gasping for breath. A slash high on her cheek has painted the right side of her face red. "Don't do this!  _Steve! Somebody help me_!" 

A bone chilling scream is ripped from her throat as the creature slowly comes forward. There is no hurry for it. A spray of blood hits the opposite wall with an obnoxious wet slap and Margaret falls silent. The music rises to an unbearable pitch. 

Natasha is the first to notice Steve turning white in the flickering glow from the TV. 

"Tony. Turn it off." 

"What? It's just getting to the good part. Cap and the Winter Soldier duke it out in Coney Island and he stabs it in the eye with a cotton candy st—Hey!" 

The chicken wing hitting Stark square between the eyes isn't as satisfying as his shocked expression, however brief. Sam slips Natasha a high five just as Steve tosses his untouched plate of pizza onto the coffee table and hurries out of the room. 

Natasha catches him at the elevator, Sam close behind. Not a word is spoken, but their hands on his shoulders, one small, one large, are grounding. 

Cold air hits him as they get to the ground floor and step out into the refreshing chill of a New York City evening. A couple in angel and demon fetish outfits teeter by hand in hand, their heels nearly the length of Steve's forearm. Across the street, a group of costumed children flanked by adults jog down the sidewalk with pumpkin baskets clutched in their hands, their tennis shoes lighting up with each step. God bless them; now that the sun's gone down, the strictly enforced curfew will kick in. They have about fifteen minutes to get their candy if they time it right. 

"You were spared a little," Natasha says after a minute of watching him try to make his breathing steady. Her manner is more curious than concerned, at least if you didn't know her very well or you weren't Steve. As it is, Steve wonders if he's bleeding from his eyes or something equally alarming. "Tony wanted to rent the remake. Trust me, the 1960 version is kid stuff." 

He smiles, or means to. "Jesus, I'd love to see that actual scary shit. Be honest with me. Is Tony right? Am I a square?" 

Sam and Natasha exchange a look he doesn't like. 

"I don't think you're a square, Steve," Sam says. "But I do think you might be having a nervous breakdown. You've been under a ton of stress lately and if you ask me, that monster flick with a woman that was supposed to be Peggy getting killed was the last straw." 

"Nervous breakdown, huh. That sounds ominous. Like something I could get put away for." 

"No, man, come on. You're burnt out. You're depressed. Tell me in all honesty that you're fine and I'll leave you alone." 

Steve drops his gaze. "I'm fine. Ginger peachy." 

"No, you're not! There's no need to front right now, it's just us. What year is it, can you tell me that?" 

"Nine . . ." He winces. "2014." 

"2014, that's right. It's Halloween of 2014, right, Romanoff?" 

She nods. "Right." 

"I know the fucking movie's not real," Steve snaps, unbidden. "I know it's just a movie.  _Captain America vs. The Winter_ _Soldier._ " He scoffs. _"_ Peggy's fine, or as fine as can be expected, given she's living in a nursing home and the government is most likely feeding her drugs that are speeding up the Alzheimer's." 

"We haven't confirmed that," Nat starts, but Sam waves her off, mouthing  _He needs to get it out._  

"And there's no such thing as a Winter Soldier," Steve says, huffing a desperate laugh and gesturing to a teenager walking by dressed like Count Dracula. "I guess everyone who's ever died of blood loss was killed by a vampire, too, right?" He deflates. "Look, I know what you're going to say, but I need to be alone for a few minutes, okay? And when I say alone, I don't mean hunkering down in the bathroom with JARVIS asking if I need assistance, I mean alone, by myself." 

Sam starts to protest, then sighs. "It's not a good idea." 

"No, probably not. I know we're all going stir crazy, but I really don't know how much longer I can take it, Sam. Hey, I'm the guy having the nervous breakdown, right?" 

"Don't do that." Sam glances at Natasha before making a gesture of surrender. "Hey, do what you want. You know where to find me. Just make sure you let me know you're alright before you turn in," he urges Steve. "I'll be up all night from those damn energy drinks Barton had me try, so don't think you'll be bothering me." 

"That's less of an incentive, then," he says, smiling. Sam just raises his eyebrows. "Sure, don't be surprised if I knock on your door around midnight. I'll bring up leftovers." 

 "You'd better," Sam says, nodding to them both before heading back inside. 

When he's gone, Natasha says, "Steve, look at me," and Steve does. Her eyes are calm and still, unchanging in this strange world. He can't look away. 

She says, "You're not okay."  

He sighs. "No," he agrees after a beat. "No." 

"You're almost at the opposite end of the spectrum of okay." 

He bows his head. "Yeah." 

She purses her lips and nods at the street. "I won't say anything if you sneak off for a minute. Scout's honor. But we're going to talk about this eventually." 

His eyebrows shoot up of their own volition. "We're going to  _talk_? About our emotional wellbeing?" He pronounces the words like an icky foreign concept. "Forgive me if I look shocked. This coming from the woman who used to pull a knife any time someone brought up feelings." 

She mock-glares at him and holds her arms out. He hugs her, squeezing tight for a second. He presses a kiss to the side of her head before pulling away. 

"Thanks, Natasha." 

She studies him, smiling a hint of a smile. "You don't have to thank me. I'm your friend." 

"Yeah, but let me anyway." 

She lightly chucks him under the chin. "Stubborn." 

He closes his eyes and leans up against the building. A quiet moment passes between them. He feels his heartbeat against the wall at his back and counts it. 

When he reaches a hundred he opens his eyes. "Hey, Nat." 

"Yeah, Steve?" 

"You ever lose someone you thought you couldn't live without?" 

Her expression doesn't change, but there's something that cracks in her eyes. It's probably a trick of light and shadow, or else she's putting on being vulnerable so he's not on unequal footing. He's sometimes struck by how much he loves Natasha. 

"Yes," she says. 

He nods, looking down the street where a little boy dressed like Spiderman has fallen down and scraped his knee. He isn't crying, but another little boy dressed as a soldier is standing over him who's nearly hysterical. Steve gets the sense the one who is injured is trying to comfort the one who isn't. 

"It." He clears his throat. "It hasn't been that long. For me." He unclenches his fists, staring down unseeingly at the bloody little half-moons in his palms. He shakes his head, sighing unevenly. "I . . . I just want him here. I can't get it through my head that he's . . . And when I do, when I finally accept he's not coming back, I don't know how I'll take it." 

"Very badly." 

He looks up at her and feels the sudden urge to laugh. "Well damn, Natasha, don't pull any punches." 

"That's the idea. As someone speaking from experience, it's going to fucking suck. You're going to want to die, you'll stop taking care of yourself, you'll be reckless in the field." She gives him a patented Natasha Look. "You know, sort of like now, but even worse. You just need to take it day by day and see what happens, Steve. Just don't forget that you're not alone and you have people who care about you and will help you work through it. Alright?" 

He has the feeling she's repeating words she's been told before. "Alright," he says. "Yeah, alright, Nat." He sighs. "You know you can talk to me too, right?" 

"Let's go back in and see if Thor and Pepper are using Tony as a piñata. They looked like they were out for blood when we left." 

"My money's on Pepper. I'm serious, Natasha." 

"So am I." She smiles at him. "I know, Steve." 

"Good." 

She nods towards the doors. "Want to join in on kicking Stark's ass?" 

"I'll be up in a few. Get a good head start for me. I just . . . I really need a second." 

"Sure." She salutes him. "Enjoy your respite from house arrest, Captain." 

He watches her disappear inside before turning and walking up the street. It's a bitingly cold night and it's not like he stopped to grab a jacket but the cool air feels like stepping into a new body, leaving the old dead skin behind. Like he can almost breathe again. 

The team has been cooped up for the better part of a week on Fury's orders after an explosion nearly took them out on live television while doing a charity event. 

"So your response to an attack on a group of people who fight villains for a living," Natasha had said when they were called in, idly dancing a double-ended blade between her fingertips, "is to keep them from fighting villains?" 

"Until I deem it viable to do otherwise, yes," Fury had said, unruffled. "A group of people who fight villains for a living aren't going to do anybody jack shit if they're dead. Are they, Agent Romanoff?" 

She'd blinked, barely restraining from rolling her eyes, but said nothing. 

"Call it a two-week suspension, call it a two-week vacation, call it nothing if that's what gets you off. The fact is, you're lying low and I'm assessing the situation. Understood?" 

They understood. They didn't have to like it. 

"Don't sweat it, we probably won't be stuck inside the entire two weeks," Clint had said on the glum ride back. "You know how the criminal element gets on Halloween. Fury's not going to bench us if someone's terrorizing civilians." 

"Goodie," Tony had said, deadpan. "Now we just have to hope to get bailed out by a ghoul." 

It had been alright the first couple of days, living in the Tower. They'd spread out to their own floors and gotten settled. The first night when Steve helped Pepper and Bruce make brownies had actually been a great time, even though they'd gotten distracted when Tony manipulated his suit to fight Thor and his hammer to see who would come out on top and the brownies had burnt to something that could no longer be considered brownies. They'd laughed about it. Hell, it was a sleepover; it was fun. 

Sam was a little less than thrilled. He'd been roped into the Avengers late and though he'd bonded quickly with the others, he wasn't a New Yorker, he still lived in D.C. He had a dog at home. 

"I have a dog at home," he complained to Steve the second afternoon. Steve was sketching him, and as Sam spoke he began drawing in Molly, Sam's golden retriever. "Mrs. Kalua can feed her and take her on walks, but she gets anxious without me. I worked late one night, got home at two in the morning and half the house was torn apart." 

Steve drew a chewed shoe hanging from the dog's mouth. "You ought to Skype with her." 

"What do you know about Skype, old timer?" 

Not much. Steve lived in D.C. too, but he didn't have anyone to talk to or miss back there. Not even a dog. 

At that moment their cell phones buzzed. The president had been assassinated. 

Her flesh seemed to have been eaten from the inside out, or so it looked like on the live footage being played on repeat on every news station. 

Steve shakes it off.  _Focus on the present,_ his SHIELD-appointed therapist had advised him.  _Don't deny the past, but don't wallow in it either._  

So he shakes it off. Focus on the present. Ain't I lucky to be alive? 

He swings by a nearby coffee shop Bruce favors, right on the cusp of closing at barely six o'clock, and picks up three dozen donuts and a coffee just for himself. He starts to order plain black like he used to drink before the war, sure to raise the teenage barista's eyebrows, but then he stops himself, eyeing the menu on the counter. They didn't have caramel macchiatos back home. No reason not to give it a shot. 

A couple blocks from the Tower he slows to a stop, looking around at the still street. He hasn't passed a single soul on the way from that coffee shop. Not unusual given the past month, the murders, the curfew. That's a depressing thought, but it's still unsettling to walk in New York City and see no one. 

A low buzz or a hum like electricity being switched on rings in his ears. His skin prickles, stirred by the crawling sensation of being watched. 

Then he hears a murmur, a giggle, off to the side. Some kids are necking in a car parked on the side of the street, one of their windows rolled down. Steve begins to walk again. What sounds like the theme from a horror movie – static, muffled screams, heavy breathing, dissonant synth – is blasting from the radio. He's reached the end of the block by the time he realizes he still hears it. 

He turns, and something in his peripheral vision ducks down an alley a few feet back. He takes a step towards the movement. 

" _If you_ _like_ _pi_ _ña_ _coladas_ _. . ._ " 

He sets the donut boxes on a bench and fishes his phone from his pocket. "Tony." This is the fourth time. "Cute." 

"What? Oh, you like the ringtone? I thought you would." The Hulk roars indistinctly in the background, glass shattering. "We've got a situation, Stars and Stripes," Tony says. "Looks like our Halloween ghoul's come out to play after all." 

"What happened?" 

"We've been infiltrated. JARVIS – get this – froze over. We weren't alerted until we were being rounded up and chased through - " He holds the phone away from his face or drops it and releases a string of curses, which makes Steve break into a sweat. Tony doesn't lose his cool easily. "Sorry, I'm currently in a vent. Long story. First our ghoul shot his way through Sam's window - " 

"God!" 

"He's fine," Tony cuts in quickly. "Bullet missed him by a mile. Think our ghoul – ghouls, I should say – are more interested in getting us cornered right now than starting a body count. Truth is, this is at least a five-man job. We had it covered at first, but then they started to . . .change. It'd be great if you could send in the cavalry, Cap - " 

" _Captain America!_ " 

Steve turns. That came from about a dozen feet back. Could it have been one of the kids in the car, spotting him and wanting an autograph? He starts to turn away. 

"Captain America, help me, please!" 

That definitely sounds like the voice of someone in trouble. Banishing the tug of doubt in his gut, he moves back down the street. The sound of shrieking metal and static grows louder. 

"Cap?" Tony's voice crackles over the line. "Anybody at home?" 

He turns down the same alley he had seen someone before. He's sure that's where the call for help had come from. "I'll be there as soon as I can, Tony. I'm just a block away, but I think–" 

Something hard nudges his cheek. Cold metal, unmistakable. 

"Captain." A man whose face is hidden behind a mask nods at him once. The safety on the gun being switched off echoes down the narrow alley. The man pulls the trigger and it fires, the shot deafening. Steve's eyes have closed involuntarily but he knows that the scream issued from a raw throat isn't his as surely as he knows that the blood spattering his face isn't his. He opens his eyes. 

The smoking gun lies on the ground several feet away, still gripped tightly in the man's hand. The rest of the man is writhing against the opposite wall, clutching the gory stump at his shoulder. Blood froths from his mouth and nose and he shakes his head frantically at something off in the shadows, something Steve can't see. 

"What," he gurgles, spitting out a thick stream of blood. "No.  _N_ _o_ _!_ Keep away from me." He kicks weakly, sending himself sprawling to the ground and crab-walking awkwardly backwards. He looks up to Steve. His mask has been torn in the confusion and Steve sees his panicked eye, the other bloody and leaking onto his cheek from what had to have been the slash of a knife. "Help me," he pleads. 

Steve unfreezes from his initial shock and takes a step forward, hand outstretched. He only realizes he'd still been holding the coffee when it falls, right-side up, hot liquid splashing his leg. 

Something strikes him in the back of the head. He sees the ground as though from a great distance, hears his would-be killer's guttural yell, and then there's nothing but the dark. 

*** 

The sky is clear and milky blue. 

That's the first thing he processes. The second thing is the distorted chords of a blues record, a familiar one, though he couldn't say why. He can hardly make out the melody. The notes that reach his ears are slowed and deepened to a somehow both upbeat and mournful moan, like he's underwater and the record's being played from high above. 

The third thing is the cold. 

He sits up. A thumping pain in his head screams in protest, and ratchets up even louder as he looks around and is struck with the sun's blinding reflection bouncing off the pale blue world. 

He's lying on a field of ice. A lake, frozen over. Like thin, glassy armor, the ground and trees surrounding the lake are covered in shimmering frost. 

His first coherent thought is that he's dead. 

"I'm dead," he says aloud. His breath ghosts the air in front of his face. 

A soft sound makes his head snap around. 

Bucky Barnes sits cross-legged on the ice a few feet away, smoking a cigarette and studying the horizon. 

"Bucky," Steve whispers, making to crawl to him. He's not sure if he can stand. 

"Don't move," Bucky says without looking over. He takes another drag on the cigarette and there's silence a moment. Steve doesn't move. He doesn't speak. He scarcely dares to breathe lest Bucky get sore at him and vanish into the air like a mist. 

If his chin-length hair is dirty, his clothes are  _filthy_ , blood- and mud-stained and torn in vital places, and he's filled out so much with muscle he could very well be another man. He's lost the last of his baby fat and it makes him rougher, a little haggard, but Steve would recognize him with his one ear deaf again and his eyes plucked out of his head. He just needs Bucky to look at him, just look at him . . . 

"You have something to say, you ought to say it," Bucky says. 

Steve laughs helplessly. Where to start? Bucky visibly tenses, but still doesn't tear his gaze from the tree line. 

He settles for "Where are we?" It's a polite way of asking if they've gone to heaven or hell. 

"Someplace safe," Bucky says, turning his head and squinting at something past Steve's shoulder. "For now. Can't stay long. I have a lot of time but not much I can actually use." 

"What do you mean, Buck? Where do you have to go?" 

"Not a question of where, it's . . ." He stops and scoffs, as though it's beneath him to finish the thought. Bucky slowly turns and faces him fully. His lips are stained wine-red, but all Steve really notices are his eyes. Those same eyes he's known for as long as he can remember. And yet there's something wrong with them, something off about the color, the pupil. It's not that they're not Bucky's eyes. It's that they're not a human's. 

 Worst of all, they look straight through him. 

"See," Bucky says, lip curled like he's smelled something foul. "You keep callin' me that." There's blood on his teeth, so much of it it drips onto the ice as he speaks. "Who the  _hell_ is Bucky?" 

The ice breaks with a thunderous crack, opening up beneath Steve like a hungry maw. Bucky lunges toward him, stopping him from falling into the freezing water at the last second, holding him up by the biceps. The cigarette hits the ice with a loud hiss. 

Bucky's cold, discolored eyes are now wild. He sets him down and shakes him once, so hard his teeth click together. 

"I'm trying to help you, damn fool," he snarls at him. Warm blood spatters his cheeks. "This is all you. If you're upset, it'll fall apart and they'll find you." 

"Who? Bucky, what the fuck are you talking about?" 

Bucky swivels his head back and forth, back to scanning the area. He takes a step back, then another, and Steve follows him, hands outstretched. 

"What are you afraid of? Tell me, Buck." 

"I'm not Bucky. Stop calling me–" He stops, his voice breaking. He looks him in the eye and Steve sees he's terrified. "Wake up now." 

"No, don't tell me this is a dream, don't . . . Don't you fucking dare, don't go, Bucky – Bucky!" 

Bucky's face fades into black, and Steve rubs his cheek on a plush cushion. 

 "–keep us distracted so he could get Cap alone without much chance of anyone going looking for him." 

"That doesn’t make any sense, Stark. This . . .  _whatever_  saved Steve's life at the same time as more of them were invading the Tower. Which handed us our asses, by the way. We've never had that close a call. Why would these fucking . . . werepire things be working with some hitman nobody?" 

"That's a good question. Almost as good as why are you on my dick, Hawkguy?" 

"Very funny, smartass. Fix your butler." 

Steve slowly blinks himself fully awake. He's lying on the couch in the common room, a thumping pain in the base of his skull. His feet are propped up on what feels like someone's lap and he knows the room is probably – probably – not really spinning but it sure looks like it. 

He realizes he's said this aloud when Thor chuckles, squeezing his knee. "I assure you, Captain, we are completely stationary." 

"Steve," he mumbles, trying to sit up. 

"Steve," Thor corrects himself with a nod, gesturing for him to lie back down. He does, very reluctantly. 

Tony wanders over, hands tucked into the pockets of his baggy sweatpants, Clint, Sam and Natasha on his heels. 

"Well, Cap," Tony says without preamble, "Someone tried to pull a fast one on America's golden boy." 

"What happened?" Steve gingerly rubs a lump forming on the back of his head with his fingertips. The lightest touch summons up a searing pain. He looks around. "Where's Bruce?" 

"Sleeping it off," Tony sighs. "And I sent Pepper to a safe house. She went, kicking and screaming, but she went." 

Everything is starting to come back to him. "Oh, shit," he says. 

"'Oh shit' is right. Someone tried to take you out," Natasha says, her arms folded tightly around herself. "And came very close. I shouldn't have let you go by yourself." 

Sam holds up a hand. "Look, I shouldn't have let him go either. But it's no one's fault. Everyone's fine, so let's focus on that, alright?" 

Natasha rolls her eyes and turns away, but says nothing, clearly biting her tongue. 

"Hey now, kids, there  _is_ _someone_ at fault," Tony says chipperly, rubbing idly at a grease stain on his cheek. "Our friendly neighborhood shooter and the nightmare brigade. But as the Winter - " He shoots a look at Natasha, who's glaring at him murderously. "Hey, I have one more free mention! As the  _things_ are in custody andthe guy's shredded up into unrecognizable little pieces spaced out across the Apple, I don't think they're going to be causing any more trouble, do you?" 

Steve does sit up this time, ignoring Thor's protests. "Shredded? Did you say shredded?" 

Tony takes up something from the coffee table, the case for  _Captain America vs. The Winter Soldier_ , and shakes it at them. "I'm just saying . . ." 

Natasha grabs it, strides to the window, opens it and throws the DVD out. " _I'm_ just saying that if I hear you say another word about winter soldiers tonight, Tony, I'm going to tie your–" 

"That was a mint condition - " Tony visibly cuts himself off. "You know what. Billionaire. I'll buy a new one. No worries." He folds his hands together like he's praying and takes a deep, wheezing breath. 

"Look, they found some more of him," Clint pipes up. 

Steve looks to the TV. The news anchor's somber face gives way to police tape and gloved hands bagging something up. 

"We spoke to two witnesses who were near the scene," a reporter on the street says. The camera cuts to two shivering teenagers. The kids from the car, Steve's fuzzy mind supplies. 

"Th-There was a gunshot and um, hollering? A ton of hollering, um." The boy scratches his head, looking to the girl at his side. 

She nods. "Yeah, like, we didn't stick around after we heard the first shot, we got out of there. But when Stanley was turning the car around, I saw someone walk out of the alley. I couldn't really see who it was, just that they were walking funny, like they were limping or something." 

"You said 'the first shot.' Do you mean to say there were more following that?" a second reporter prompts. 

"Yeah, right before the guy walked out of the alley. Like I said, we didn't stick around. We drove up the street and then called 911." 

It cuts back to the first reporter. "You heard it here first," she says. "There were reportedly two gunshots fired, the first an attempted shooting of Steve Rogers, better known by his title of Captain America, the second with results unknown. Captain Rogers has not yet given a comment about the incident. Back to you, Walt." 

"Thanks, Barbara." It cuts to a man standing in front of a ditch, people in hazmat suits collecting something from the ground moving in the background, almost ghostly figures amidst all the black. "Police are still searching for remains of the would-be killer, a man we now know to be Fred Daly, a decorated veteran with no criminal history. The brain of the operation is unknown and at large. We are being told to advise everyone to remain inside at this time." 

Steve is already on his feet. "I need to give my statement. Let the world know I'm not dead." 

"Whoa, whoa there, Powerpuff," Tony says, rounding on him and stepping in front of the door. "You wanna wait until your eyes have stopped rolling around in your head, at least?" 

"I want to go now, thanks," Steve says, anger rising sourly in his throat. "Or am I being held here?" 

"Don’t be dramatic." Tony steps aside, crossing his arms. 

"I'm coming with you," Sam says immediately. 

Steve hesitates, then sighs. "Okay." 

"We'll all go," Thor says, standing and moving to join them. "We are safer in numbers." 

They all mumble their agreements, Nat and Tony pulling on jackets, Clint taking up his arrows, utterly ignoring Steve's protests. 

Sam opens the door and nods Steve through. 

"Shall we?" 

*** 

The next morning, there is talk about nothing but Steve Rogers nearly being killed in a dark alley. 

"But perhaps the most intriguing and disturbing aspect of this case is not what happened to the victim, but to the culprit," the morning news anchor says, intently staring down the camera as though her gaze might inspire other potential killers to repent. Steve presses his fingers to his eyes to stave off an oncoming migraine. 

"Fred Daly, the hitman hired to kill Captain Steve Rogers, has been brutally murdered and his mutilated body has still not been completely recovered. We know for a fact that Captain Rogers could not have possibly attacked his assailant, because he was found unconscious at the scene, and had been unconscious for some time." The camera pans out to reveal three other reporters sitting at the desk. "What do you think, Bill?" 

"We haven't seen an attack like this in years," a newsman comments. "Decades. So what's different now? Is this a coincidence, the first in a horrible series of events backdropped by more horrible series of events? Or is this thing a Captain America fan?" 

Steve turns the TV off with a growl, standing and stalking to the front door of his apartment, intent on heading to the gym downstairs to pulverize a punching bag. 

He steps on something that gives with a soft, wet sound and sends up the foul odor of death. 

A rotting leg, still partly clad in a torn scrap of blood-soaked jeans, lies before his threshold. 

A Styrofoam cup sits nearby, all the more threatening for its innocuousness. He stoops to picks it up without thinking and smells it. 

Caramel macchiato. 


	6. Shine On, Harvest Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's entirely possible, Steve thinks, his guy is the roommate from hell.

**March 10, 194** **0** **?**

"Hey, it's the man of the hour," Steve says, closing his book and tossing it onto the coffee table. He hadn't been reading it for the past ten minutes anyway. 

Bucky grins where he's holding himself up on the doorknob. "You waitin' up for me, kid?" 

"Told you I would." Steve looks him up and down and smirks, patting his knee. "Come here." 

Bucky locks the door and saunters over, smile gone sheepish. It's funny, to Steve, how shy he still gets when they get started. But his cheeks are pink and the devil's in his eyes, so he knows any lingering bashfulness won't last too long. 

Sure enough, he drops down to all fours in the middle of the room and crawls the rest of the way to him. Steve thinks it's supposed to make him laugh, but he's not laughing. He squirms where he sits as Bucky comes to a stop at his feet, resting his chin on his knee with a dopey grin. 

"Buck." 

"You got a little somethin' . . ." 

Steve swipes drool off his lower lip. "Can it," he warns his stifled laugh. "Looks like you've got a little something yourself." He fingers Bucky's lipstick-stained collar. "Have a good time?" 

"Would have been better if you'd come with me." He rubs his cheek on Steve's thigh, mouthing along the seam of his trousers. "Thought about you. Would have liked to have seen you get your dick sucked." 

Steve spreads his knees, throwing an arm over the back of the couch. "Night's still young." 

"You know what I mean." But Bucky pries his legs further apart and nuzzles into his stomach, untucking his shirt and nosing at the hot skin beneath. 

Steve's breath stutters. He tangles fingers into Bucky's hair and just restrains himself from pulling him away. "I ought to be the one doing that. Could be my birthday present for you." He briefly looks away when Bucky looks up at him. "One of them," he admits. 

"It's my birthday, pal," Bucky says. "I get whatever I want, right?" 

"Yeah, but –" 

"Tina rode me while Dot sat on my face." Bucky reaches down and squeezes himself at Steve's expression, opening his mouth wide. "Wanna taste?" 

"I . . .  _Both_ _of . . ._?No, Jesus, that's . . ." He sits bolt upright as Bucky unzips him and takes his cock out. He's not wearing underwear. Bucky groans at the sight and starts to stroke him, leaning in to suck a hickey onto his stomach. " _Disrespectful_ ," Steve gasps. "She don't even like me." 

"She likes you fine. You think I'd pay her any mind if she didn't?" 

"Oh, she just adores me, alright. That's why our last date went so well," Steve says, but it's hard to be bitter when Bucky's dragging a fingernail purposefully into his slit, flicking it a little. His whole body jerks. "God _damn_ , Buck." 

Bucky just smiles, not so much kissing his thigh as pressing his smile into it. "If you weren't so stuffy, you would have gone and they would have given you more attention than me. Asked where you were and everything. Tina especially loves a guy who don't have much experience. God, Steve, you should have come with me." 

Steve looks at the ceiling, afraid the sight of Bucky's eyes going crossed with the concentration he's putting into working his dick will set him off. "Like I said, night's still young." 

Bucky shakes his head but doesn't argue with him. "Maybe some other time, anyway. For right now I'll just be grateful I got you all to myself, huh? Say you want me." 

Steve grabs the base of his dick, squeezing so tight it hurts. "Bucky–" 

"I get whatever I want," Bucky repeats. Without breaking eye contact, he leans in to Steve's cock as close as he can get without his lips brushing the head. His breath tickles the sensitive skin. "And I want to make you come. What's it gonna take, Rogers?" 

"Not much if you keep on," Steve says shakily. "I – I . . . Dammit, I wanna last for you." 

"You don't have to. I just want you to feel good. Shut your trap and let me work, huh? Whaddya say?" 

Steve takes a deep breath and another and another and waits until it all comes out even before he says, "Happy birthday, Bucky." 

"Thank you, baby," Bucky whispers. "Hey, you'll like this. Been practicing." 

"Practicing – BUCKY!" 

Bucky makes a noise around his cock that can only be described as smug. He pauses there a moment with Steve's cock making his throat bulge and holds Steve's bony hips down with his hands. Then, just when Steve is starting to writhe and lose his breath with begging, Bucky pulls back only to swallow him down again. 

"Bucky," Steve gasps, head lolling on the back of the couch. "Bucky, Bucky." 

"You're so fucking easy." Bucky says it like he's angry about it, breathing harsh, eyes blown black. "If I had my way I'd keep you like this all the t –" He cuts himself off, sliding down on Steve's dick again with a moan. 

"Bucky – fuck, you're gonna kill me." 

Bucky's calloused fingers stroke his hips and drag him closer, squeezing tight enough to bruise. Steve's skin pulses everywhere Bucky's touching him. The sounds Bucky's making are going to haunt Steve for the rest of his life, he knows, but doesn't think that's any kind of reason to ask him to stop. 

Then Bucky does, just for a moment, to whisper something that sounds to his one functional ear like "shut up, you" but could very easily be "worship you" before he sucks him down again, moaning around his length like he's the one getting head. It becomes clear which it was he said when he pulls back for air, stroking Steve to make up for it, and says, "I figured it out, see. You ever hear of reincarnation?" 

Steve, desperately trying not to hyperventilate or come on Bucky's face, gives him a look that could sour milk. 

"If this is more of your blasphemy shit, Buck - " 

"Well, you know me." Bucky grins wickedly, precome and spit dribbling from his mouth as he gives his dick little teasing kitten licks. "See, I think I worshipped you in a past life. 'Cause how else could anybody love someone this much?" 

"Suck me off, heathen," Steve wheezes, trying to tug Bucky's head back down, but Bucky shakes him off, pressing his stupid tipsy smile to the base but just lightly, not giving him any friction other than the slow tortuously good slide of his palm. 

His words buzz into hypersensitive skin. "You're the first thing goes through my head when I wake up and the last thing before I fall asleep, every morning, every night. You think that counts as prayer, Rogers?" 

Steve whimpers, curling and uncurling shaking fingers in Bucky's hair futilely. "Come on, do what you want to me, just not . . .  _that_." His voice cracks even as his dick twitches in Bucky's hand. 

"What, this? Telling you what you are to me?" He pointedly licks up the furious leak from Steve's slit. "Nah, I think you like it like this. I think I do too. I don't imagine I ever got to, before. Back then. No, then you were just an abstract idea and I was a walking talking altar of Steve, or whatever I called you then. Happy in my longing like a dog with its tongue hangin' out of its mouth, blissful even. I bet I bled for you and I liked it." 

"You fucking . . . demon." Steve thrusts up desperately into Bucky's grip, ignoring the knowing look in his eyes. "We're going to Mass tomorrow. You're gonna go to confession and . . . fucking grovel." He groans as Bucky sucks him again, his demon quiet for a while save a satisfied little laugh. 

But Bucky just can't help himself. He pulls off right when he's close, his red wet lips obscene. "You know I'm not a religious guy, Steve. Just never went in much for the whole convention of it. But I believe in you, I do, and more than that, I just can't stomach the idea of anyone else judging my immortal soul. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted with it but I'd like to think you'd eat it. Maybe let me sit on your tongue for a minute like the Eucharist, let me feel your love like a revelation." Seeing how Steve tenses he shuts up and seals his lips around him at the last second. 

Steve's eyes roll back into his head and his fingertips dig into the meat of Bucky's shoulder when he comes. 

"I'm gonna have you committed," he pants, dick still partially hard against Bucky's nuzzling. "The hell is wrong with you?" 

"Same thing's wrong with you, dollface. I'm sweet on the dumbest fella in New York. It's kinda pathetic." 

Steve tugs him up off his knees by his sweaty hair. "C'mere. Come on." He's whining and he does think maybe it's pretty pathetic but finally Bucky's kissing him and it doesn't matter. 

 "You weren't born, you crept out of the depths of hell one day and decided you had nothing better to do than plague me," Steve says in between kisses. Between Bucky's trying to cannibalize him in the most sensual way possible and his own faulty breath, it takes him five minutes to get out. "And I figure I'm worse because I lo–" 

Bucky kisses him hard, more teeth than anything. Him and his biting. He holds Steve's face in his hands inches from his own. All Steve can see of him is his eyes. "Be nice to me, babydoll," he breathes into his mouth. "But not too nice. I gotta run, see." He looks over his shoulder for a second. His hair tickles Steve's neck even though they're eye to eye, and isn't that funny? "God, you got no idea. Even when I couldn't remember you, I'd pray to you. You really were God then, a presence, like. You were the only thing they couldn't take away from me, you understand." 

"Huh?" Steve asks drowsily, running his hand through Bucky's hair. It's cold like he stuck his head in the ice box, and there's more of it than there should be. "Whatcha going on about leaving, I haven't even given you your birthday whacks yet." Bucky's eyes are so earnest and the light's caught on them oddly, burning the blue down like the sky at sunset. He laughs at him. "You're such a loony, you know? Buck. Honest, I lov–" 

Bucky kisses him again, jerking him in by the lapels. He hears his shirt tear. 

"I have to go. Just wanted to see you," he whispers, words skipping over each other. "They're reeling me in. Can't even feel you anymore. Can you please try to take better care of yourself so I can get some goddamn rest?" 

Steve yawns. "You got some funny ideas, old man. Gee, you slip me something or is your mouth just that good?" He smiles so Bucky knows he's just teasing but when he opens his eyes no one's there. Their old apartment's gone and his bed is cold and empty, like it always is now. 

His phone buzzes on the nightstand. " _Never_ _gonna_ _give you up, never_ _gonna_ _let you down . . ._ _"_  

He groans. "Fucking Tony," he mumbles. 

"Whoa," Sam says into his ear. "Say no more. I can call back later." 

"Ha, ha. He keeps changing my . . ." He sighs as he sits up, suddenly feeling his true age on the inside. 

"You alright?" Sam asks. 

His eyes are swollen and running and his boxers are sticky, but Sam doesn't need to know that. "Yeah, I'm fine," he says. Then, "No, actually, not really, but I'll be okay. It's just that I keep having these dreams about, about my friend." Sam will know who he's talking about if he ever paid attention in an American history class, and if not he'll just have to use his imagination. "Have you ever had a dream that actually happened?" 

Sam hums thoughtfully. "I don’t think so. Wait, no, there was this time I dreamed about going to Disney World and my parents surprised me the next day with tickets." 

"No, I mean something that already happened. Like you were reliving it." 

"Can't say I have. Wanna air it out?" 

"No," Steve snorts. "Not the kind you share." 

"Start up a journal maybe? I'm sorry you're going through that, man." 

Steve shrugs, still a little asleep, then remembers Sam can't see him. Presumably. He flips off a wall that may or may not be bugged, then feels so moronically paranoid he chucks his pillow at the wall. "Yeah, well. So is this a personal call or?" 

"So-so. Was calling to check in. Heard you're moving back to D.C. today." 

Steve grunts. "Fury's punting me back to D.C., you mean. Says he's got a job for me." 

"We'll have to meet up for coffee once you get settled. But, uh, I just got off the Quinjet in Manhattan." 

Steve laughs. "That was fast. Did you even get home before you got the call?" 

"Man, I had  _just_  walked  _in,_ " he says, "Didn't have time to so much as take a leak before Fury's going 'haul your happy ass back here Wilson.' You think that's funny? Get laughing, white boy, because I also called to say there are killer robots in the streets with drills for hands and lasers for eyes and we need backup." 

Steve groans, already standing and grabbing his duffel. "But me and the motel roaches were just getting to know each other." 

"Don't say your goodbyes just yet. The reason it's me calling and not Fury is because I think you should sit this one out." 

Steve slows from throwing a t-shirt into his bag. "The hell do you mean sit this one out? You said you need backup." 

"Yeah, we do, but we also need you totally recovered. Halloween shook you up bad." 

"Christ, Sam, that was a month ago. I haven't even thought about it in weeks," he lies shamelessly. "If there's any way I can help I'm going to give it." 

Sam sighs. "Yeah, I figured you'd say something stupid like that. Worth a shot. I'll see you." 

Steve hangs up and throws his meager things together, sighing off and on. 

 _Scratch_ _scratch_ _._  

He turns slowly to the door. He stopped at the first rundown motel he could find and it seems they haven't invested in heating or changed the wallpaper since the 1950s. He's not even sure the locks work, but then, that was part of the appeal. Apparently they don't as he throws the door open and the rusted relic of a doorknob clatters to the floor. 

A little black terrier recoils, growling. Its nose twitches and it presses in around Steve's legs, sniffing the air furiously, but then it jumps back again, the fur along its spine standing on end. 

"You must be here for the rats, fella," Steve says, reaching down to pet it, but it snaps at his hand, ears lying flat on its head. "Hey, it's alright, I'll leave you alone." He steps aside for the dog but it remains in the hallway, growling, inching forward across the threshold before leaping back. 

A young woman materializes from the dark hall, rolling her eyes when she sees the dog. "Buffy, what are you doing? Come on!" She nudges the dog away from the doorway. "Sorry," she mutters to him. The dog strains away from her for a moment, eyes bulging out of its head and staring into Steve's room, before it snuffles and runs away. "He's old," the woman says before going after him. 

Steve shuts the door and looks around the room. There's a questionable stain on the bathroom floor and the sheets should have probably been burned before most of the Avengers were born but there's no one physically there. Maybe the last person to stay here had snuck a dog in much like the woman he'd seen. He finishes packing in less than two minutes and leaves, hopping onto his bike and heading north. 

The cold, hard sunlight strikes the road between patches of trees in such a way he can't help but imagine he catches flashes of something bounding alongside his bike, something with claws that dig deep into the earth with each sprinting step, but every time he glances over there's nothing there. 

*** 

"The future sucks," Steve announces nine hours later, his leg propped up on a chair. "Robots suck. Robots are supposed to be amazing. I hate robots." 

"Do you hate the future too?" Bruce asks, setting a beer in front of him and easing himself carefully into his designated La-Z-Boy shoved up to the table. 

"Ask me again some other time. Next year, maybe." Steve swallows the beer down like water and crushes the empty can between his hand and the tabletop until it's flat. He stands slowly, testing to see if his broken leg has really finished healing. It takes all his weight and he doesn't feel any pain; should be good to go. "Good work out there today, all of you. Makes me proud to be part of such a great team. I'm going to fuck off now." 

"Fuck off," Sam, Natasha and Clint chorus, raising their drinks to him. Tony, already having downed six, throws his at him but it mostly sloshes on the table. 

"Who turned this on. Can there be no peace," he says as Steve's almost to the door, and he happens to look over his shoulder at the TV mounted on the wall. 

"Aw, shit," he says. "Is that . . .?" 

"Macabre Captain America fan club strikes again!" 

"I'm glad you're enjoying this," Steve tells Clint. "Jesus." 

"Designing and unleashing genocidal robots onto the public doesn't an innocent make, Cap," Nat points out. 

"I know that, I know. It's just . . . Reporters make up wild theories in these situations, it's what they do, but there really is a pattern emerging here. Maybe they think they're helping the Avengers?" 

"Or maybe they're in  _loooove_  with you," Clint says, drawing a heart in the air. 

Steve snorts. "Bruce took the brunt of that attack. By that logic it's fair to say they're in love with Bruce." 

"Sure," Clint says in a tone that says he turned his hearing aid off and doesn't know what he said. 

Steve stares at the muted gore on the television screen for a moment. It's worrying to know they're showing the least graphic of it and he can see bones sticking through the hapless villain's neck. 

"Jesus," he repeats. "I am fucking off. No one call me for any work-related reason for. Well, for twenty-four hours, at least." 

"Fuck off," Natasha and Sam say again, but absentmindedly and out of sync. The TV returns to its regularly scheduled Saturday morning cartoon. 

*** 

"Made it home in one piece," Steve says into the phone. "Aren't you proud of me?" 

"Flabbergasted, more like. Listen, I'm prescribing you with sleep for a week, grandpa. Think you can handle it?" 

"I can give it a try, but I'm not making any promises." He fishes his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the front door, stepping into semi-familiar darkness. "Yeah, I made it. Think I might actually take my first dose, doc." 

"Glad to hear it," Sam says, smile evident in his voice. "I'm thinking I might take some myself. See you on the other side, man." 

Steve hangs up, dropping his bag on the floor and starting forward cautiously, scanning the shadows for movement. 

His apartment reeks of wet dog. 

He moves slowly down the hallway, hanging close to the wall. When he gets to the kitchen he freezes. The ice box – the refrigerator door's open, shedding yellow light over the floor. 

He holds perfectly still, tensed up to fight if something should leap out at him. Nothing happens. Nothing happens . . . and . . . nothing happens. 

"Anyone there?" he calls, then scowls, feeling foolish. He damn well hopes his refrigerator hasn't been open for three weeks, but it's not impossible. But that doesn't explain away the smell. 

Pulling his jacket tighter around himself, he shuts the fridge and switches on a light. He turns around. 

Something is under the table. 

"Hey." Slowly, slowly he takes the shield from his back. "Come out of there." 

An outline of black can be seen and he thinks wildly of a bear escaped from the zoo. Stifles a laugh at the last second. 

"Come on out now," he says. "What, you scared?" He's not sure why he says it, taunting an intruder he can't even see, but it does the trick. The table hitches to one side, then the other, precariously tilted for a second like it'll fall. Steve finds he's holding his breath, watching as the thing moves to the opposite side of the room. He still can't see it for the table, but – 

There's a pounding on the door. "Steve? Is everything alright in there?" 

He turns his back, and knows immediately the thing will be gone when he turns around again. Cursing, he jogs to the front door. 

Sharon from down the hall stands on his threshold, her arms crossed like she's cold. 

"I heard some weird noise, is everything alright?" 

"Tripped on a chair," Steve says, smile tight. "Sorry for waking you." 

"I heard about what happened. I mean, how could I not?" As she talks she peers around his shoulders. It's subtle, a practiced way of angling her body; most people wouldn't even notice it, which is why he notices. He would write it off as her being a nosy neighbor if it weren't for one thing. "If there's anything I can do - " 

"That's swell of you, Sharon, but I think all I need to do right now is settle back in." 

She seems ready to say something else but then just smiles. It even reaches her eyes.  _Oh, she's good_ , he thinks. 

"Sure. If you need anything just give me a ring." 

"By the way," Steve says, "is that a gun in your pocket or . . ." 

She blinks, confused, then carefully schools her expression. "This old thing," she laughs, gesturing to the handgun visibly tucked into her pajama bottoms. "I like to be prepared, you know?" 

"I know," he says, looking her in the eyes. Her face doesn't give anything away. 

"Well, goodnight, Steve." 

"Goodnight, Sharon." 

He's barely shut the door before he's calling Natasha. "Do you know anything about my neighbor spying on me?" 

Nat sighs, loud and longsuffering. "Sharon Carter, SHIELD agent for six years. Fury thought he was being cute when he hired her for the job." 

Steve sputters. " _Peggy's_  Sharon? She talks about her all the time!" 

"So you're no detective. That's not exactly news." 

Steve suddenly remembers there's either a creature in his home or he'd moments before been having a hallucination. He swears. "Is my apartment bugged too?" 

"Probably. Audio, not visual, if so. But I did a sweep the last time I was over. You're welcome. Fridge, dressers and curtains are hot spots. Can I go back to sleep now?" 

"You  _sleep_?" He tries to picture it. "Thanks, Nat." She grumbles and hangs up on him. 

He locks the door and begins searching for bugs. 

"Hey, if you're going to squat in my house you could at least earn your keep," he tries, but there's no answer. 

After an hour with no luck, Steve gives up and it occurs to him maybe he should have been looking for the thing that may or may not be lurking in the shadows that may or may not be a killing machine, but he figures there's not much for it. If it wanted to kill him there's nothing Fury or the Avengers up in New York could do and he somehow doubts Sharon Carter's gun would be a match for something that could tear a man completely apart. 

He falls onto the bed without undressing, too tired to even take off his shoes. 

"Sweet dreams," he tells his cold apartment. "I'd appreciate it if you don't kill me in my sleep," he starts to say, but he's asleep before he gets halfway started. 

The next afternoon he wakes up, sweating, a blanket tucked up to his chin. His mind's a blank: no dreams had plagued him, he'd slept like a rock. He looks around. The room's empty. Still, a feeling of wrongness pervades. 

He gets up and promptly trips over his boots placed side by side next to the bed. 

*** 

He debates back and forth for ten minutes whether or not to bring anyone else into this, but then he finds the blood. There's a little in his bedroom but the most of it is in a gruesome trail from the hallway to the kitchen. Sure enough he finds it crusted on the bottom of his boots; it had been there before he had. 

"Something you wanna tell me, roomie?" He begins to clean, constantly braced for an attack that never comes. 

He's on all fours in the kitchen with cleaning supplies surrounding him like a ring of protection, sponging down the stains like he's trying to drive a hole through the floor when he notices it's gotten chilly enough for him to consider going to his room to grab a jacket, and he's about to stand when something cold and damp nudges his foot. 

Steve's breath chokes in his throat as he turns to look over his shoulder. 

At first all he really processes is the teeth. At least five overlapping rows of forty or so fangs the length of Steve's middle finger flash at him as the thing works its mouth like it's trying to talk. 

Steve crawls to the kitchen island and sits with his back against it, facing the creature, which sits on its haunches and looks back at him. 

"Well," Steve says for lack of anything better to say. "Hello." 

Its skin is a metallic silver, dirty and bloody in patches. He wonders if it once had fur but had it shorn off, because if Steve didn't know better he would think a hairless, oversized wolf with too many teeth was sitting in his kitchen, watching him. 

"You're not that scary," Steve says without thought. As though to prove him wrong, the wolf-thing stands on all fours and moves towards him. Steve doesn't let himself move or even breathe as it inspects him, which seems to involve lightly butting his chin and shoulder with its muzzle and thoroughly sniffing him, paying special attention to his freshly healed leg. It growls a few inches from his ear, explosively loud, and Steve wills himself not to panic. "I'm not afraid of you," he repeats. 

The thing licks his cheek. Its tongue feels like an ice cube. It backs away to look at him and growls again. Its yellow eyes look into his. 

"Are you . . .? I'm going insane. Are you trying to talk to me?" 

It steps closer and licks him again. 

"Okay. Stop that." 

It immediately backs away and sits. 

"Now, what do you want?" 

It cocks its head to the side. 

"This isn't going anywhere," Steve says. "You can't talk?" 

The lupine creature just looks at him. 

"Okay." Steve reaches into his pocket and takes out his cell phone. 

Before he knows what's happened the thing has taken his whole hand in its mouth and Steve goes perfectly still. 

When there's no intense white flash of pain Steve wonders why his hand is still attached to his wrist, but when the creature releases him and Steve no longer has his phone, it's not hard to guess. 

"You're real pleased with yourself, huh?" 

A tail sweeps the floor once, twice, behind the wolf. 

"That's going to hurt going down, buddy," Steve says. "You know I have a home phone too, right?" 

It wags its tail again. 

"I . . .  _don't_  have a home phone," he guesses. 

That fucking tail wag. 

"So let me get this straight. You cornered me in my apartment,  _ate_  my phone, effectively preventing me from communicating with the outside world, so you can lick me to death?" 

The wolf lunges forward and begins doing just that. Some of its teeth scrape against his skin and he shudders. 

"Stop, stop it!"  _Bad dog_ , goes unspoken, but Steve can't help thinking it. 

The wolf once again backs away and sits, this time lowering its head and ears, eyes downcast. 

Steve runs through possible next steps. He pictures finding a dog carrier big and sturdy enough to hold it, sticking it on a plane and sending it to Fury. 

"I'm cracking up," Steve says. "I've really lost it this time." 

The creature that's dismembered at least two people and probably more flops onto its back, tongue lolling out of its mouth. 

"Do you want me to fucking pet you?" Steve asks incredulously. 

The creature whines like any dog, tail beating the air as effectively as a ceiling fan, and that's when Steve sees the black blood crusted to its abdomen. It's a gash, still bleeding sluggishly. 

"Oh. Ouch." Steve stands and starts to head to the bathroom, then pauses. "Stay . . . Stay there." The wolf just looks at him. 

A surreal moment passes where Steve fumbles through the meager supplies in the medicine cabinet and comes up with nothing but a hair clip, an extra toothbrush, a roll of tape, and a bandaid. He wets a rag with warm water and soap and grabs the tape, then the bandaid as an afterthought. 

He's a little surprised to find the wolf where he'd left it. He kneels beside it, keeping his movements slow, but it doesn't acknowledge him. It's calm, its breathing even, but the wound is uglier than Steve first thought when he looks at it up close. 

He holds up the bandaid. "Think this'll do?" 

The wolf turns its head to look at him, and the flat way it stares at him and the absurdity of the situation makes Steve laugh so hard he's afraid he's slipped into madness. 

He gets control of himself and shakes his head. "No. I guess not." He holds up the rag. "This is probably gonna hurt. I'm gonna clean this and you're gonna try to not eat me, deal?" 

The wolf blinks, looking at the rag and sniffing the air. 

"Just soap and water. Okay?" 

Cautiously, Steve reaches out and wipes at the wound, more or less testing to see what the creature will do. It merely closes its eyes and lies still. Steve goes to work, cleaning out old blood and dirt until the white rag is a muddy reddish brown. At one point he has to pry out what look like tiny metal filaments. When he sets them out in a line on the floor he counts twelve. The wolf doesn't so much as flinch. 

Steve lets the ugly but clean wound dry a minute before tearing off a piece of duct tape. "This is the best I can do, buddy," he says before taping up the gash. 

No sooner is the tape on than the wolf rolls onto its feet and moves to the door. 

"Oh no," Steve says, scrambling up and blocking it with his body. "You think I'm letting you back outside? Maybe I've lost touch with reality but I'm not stupid. I don't believe for a second you're always . . . like this." 

The wolf growls at him. 

"I don't know if you can change willingly, but if you can, please do as soon as possible, okay? 'Cause you can kill me and leave if you want, or we can rot in here." 

There's a moment where the creature is completely motionless and Steve thinks maybe he's misjudged. Maybe the creature isn't actually fond of him, and isn't that something only a crack-up would believe? But then it turns and stalks out of the room like a sullen teenager. 

Steve lets out a whoosh of breath, hand to his chest, and immediately wonders if any of that had actually happened. He cautiously follows the wolf-thing, assuming by the direction it had been headed it had gone to the bedroom or the bathroom, but it's nowhere to be found. 

"You can only be found if you want to be found," Steve says. "Is that right?" Hoping to trick an answer out of it. Unsuccessfully. He flops down on his couch and turns on the TV. "Fine, let me think the worst." 

He flips through channels aimlessly for a while, and he starts getting into a cooking show so it's honestly a surprise when he opens his eyes and finds that it's dark and the evening news is on. 

An empty glass is on the coffee table. Beneath it is a slip of paper. With a trembling hand Steve takes it and reads it by the light of the TV. 

 _Thanks for the first aid._ _Little stuffy in here for my taste. Don't wait up. R_ _oomie._  

Steve balls it up and throws it at Anderson Cooper's face.

The front door opens and shuts and Steve springs to his feet. He needn't have bothered though, because his guest is coming, not going. He can hear footsteps shuffling around before he rounds the corner. The lights are off but he can make out the outline of a person standing just in front of the door. Steve slowly moves towards them. This is the part where he renders them unconscious, or makes a valiant effort to anyway, in order to bring them in. 

His creature flips the light on and breezes by him. 

The man sets several plastic bags on the table and starts putting cans on the counter, milk and eggs and fruit in the fridge. He hands Steve a protein bar. When Steve doesn't move to take it, he takes his hand and closes his fingers around it. 

Steve stares dumbly as the man sits at instead of under the kitchen table, wearing a poor excuse of a tank top that he quickly shucks and tosses aside. He rips off a frayed piece of tape from his stomach and flicks it onto the table. He takes up what looks like a sewing needle from a little box in his lap and begins threading it through the savaged skin of his abdomen. 

"It's impolite to stare," Bucky says without looking up from his task. Then, after several moments of silence: "What, are you surprised?" 

This is either the part where he wakes up or the part where he forgets it's a dream and that's sometimes worse. He thinks about not answering, about standing there until this moment fades out and he's back in bed. But Bucky looks up at him expectantly. 

"Not . . . Not exactly. What are . . ." He clears his throat. "What are you doing, Buck?" 

Bucky gestures to the pink wound just below his navel. "Mad scientist dame stabbed me with a drill. First time that's ever happened. Kind of neat. You know, you can see your flesh and guts fly everywhere in front of you like confetti. The noise I made was hilarious." He pokes the crumpled tape on the table with his pinkie. "This sealed the skin up some and the serum should take care of the rest, but I like to do it myself when I can." 

Steve's standing just in front of him and doesn't remember moving, just knows he's got his hands in Bucky's filthy hair. It smells like death. "You. Should cut this." 

"No," he says, then, "Are you telling me to?" 

Steve nods, then tilts his head, imagining Bucky with his hair short and slicked back, or maybe freshly buzzed. Nothing happens. It remains lanky and cluttered with gore. 

"Oh, this isn't a dream," Bucky says factually after a moment, answering his unspoken question. "Sorry to disappoint." Bucky pushes him away. He points to the protein bar on the floor. "Eat that." 

Steve picks it up and sits down across from Bucky. He peels the plastic wrapper open with some difficulty, his hands shaking violently. The smell turns his stomach and he nibbles on it because Bucky's watching him. 

"You don't have to cut your hair," Steve blurts when Bucky doesn’t' say anything. "If you don't want to." 

Bucky grunts. 

The silence stretches on unbearably. "Color me surprised," he continues just to hear something other than the dull roar in his head. "Winter soldiers are just big dogs." 

Bucky stares. "What?" 

"You're a werewolf. You turn into a wolf." Steve's heart stutters. "Right?" 

Bucky sets down the needle and laughs at him. Steve thinks it's a laugh; Bucky's not smiling. "Well, that much is true. I guess you could say." He peels his lower lip down and Steve watches as his normal teeth contract and yellowing fangs take their place, so long they stretch over his upper lip and cut the tip of his nose. They shrink again and Bucky swipes the cut on his nose like an afterthought. "Think of it like a signature," he says. "My original handlers called me  _Der Wolf_  because I bit them." 

"Your . . ." 

"Handlers," Bucky repeats, going back to his stitching. "It has to do with your nature too, of course. The serum picks up on little things like personality, can you believe that?" He laughs again, a little hysterical. 

"I guess so. Bucky . . ." 

Bucky smiles, but it's not right. It looks forced, like someone's jerking strings connected to the corners of his lips. "Do you have to call me that?" 

Steve feels like the air is ice water seeping into his skin. "What do you want me to call you?" 

He hesitates, gaze intent on his work. "Soldier's okay." 

"Okay. Soldier." He thinks a minute how to phrase his question. "What, uh, happened after–" 

"I'm not your friend, you know," the Soldier says quietly, not looking up from the steady in, out, in, out of the thread through his skin. 

"No?" 

He shakes his head. He sets the needle on the table and smiles at it, his voice distant, dreamy.

"James Barnes died in 1945. He was crying for you." He shakes his head again. "You shouldn't feel bad about it, it was a long time ago, and it was inevitable. He was weak. I'm what they made to take his place. To be better. Stronger. I took over after that. Things got a lot easier when I didn't have to deal with him screaming all the time." 

He looks up. The protein bar in Steve's fist has turned to dust and trickles down to the floor through his fingers. 

Bucky looks at him, confused. "Aren't you going to eat that?" 


	7. My Echo, My Shadow, And Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghosts of past and present reconcile.

**February 14, 19** **4** **5**  

A team of them dig into his jaw to keep it still, but one of them makes the mistake of getting too close. The fingers fall limp into his lap as the grunt screams and holds up his gushing nubs for everyone to see. See, he seems to say without saying anything, see what it did to me, see what it'll do to you. He's promptly ushered from the room, a sound blow administered to the back of his head to keep him quiet. 

"Would you mind?" one of the scientists says dispassionately on the other side of the glass, not looking up from his notes. A handful of grunts lining the wall leap forward, terror in their eyes. The sour smell of piss fills the room. 

The additional force only makes him buck harder. The metal cuff around the left wrist shatters and the hand closes around one of their throats, squeezing until blood spurts across his face. He greedily laps it off his lips and keeps squeezing until the man's body lies against his leg like a doll made of straw. 

"Subdue it or you'll all be shot!" the same scientist shouts above the noise. 

Three men grip his chin, forcing his mouth shut, while four more hold the freed arm. Another brings forth a heavy metal chain. They bind the wrist to the chair, babbling and cursing each other, glancing constantly at his mouth to make sure the teeth aren't going to come out. As soon as they have him secure, a ninth grunt brings out the muzzle. 

He struggles, but only manages to nick one of their wrists with a fang. An artery is hit; blood arcs high in the air, coloring the other grunts' ashen faces. The muzzle closes around his mouth and is clamped shut at the back of his head. 

"Lock in," one of the scientists says, and the rest seem to agree. A metal configuration lowers around the crown of his head and it presses in like it's meant to crush his skull. Instead, blazing shock shoots through his entire body and for an undeterminable period of time he knows nothing but the pain. 

He's still screaming when the machine is lifted and a man steps into view, blacked out against the sterile light fixtures in the ceiling. Then he crouches in front of the chair, a hand gently cupping his chin. 

The man's kind blue eyes gaze up at him steadily, considering him. Seemingly seeking something in his reaction. His blonde hair is styled back from a classically handsome face, and when he leans in slightly and a few waves tumble over his forehead, Bucky's heart slows and he's no longer aware of the techs and grunts lingering in the corners of the room or the harrowing pain vibrating throughout every cell of his body or his empty echoing spaces or anything else. 

A single syllable,  _Steve_ , pulses through him. He's unsure what it means. He knows nothing but that he would happily do anything this man asked him to. 

The man seems to have found what he was looking for. He smiles at him. 

"Hello, Soldier." 

  

**Friday the 13** **th** **, October, 1938**  

"The stories vary, but the old folk's'll all agree on one thing: the Winter Soldier doesn't sleep. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't die. It doesn't give up. If it wants you dead, you're already gone." 

Davey Mitchell thwaps his brother on the back of the head. "I think you're having a little too much fun with this, brat." 

Carl shoves him, grinning. "Least I don't actually believe it." Davey just rolls his eyes. "C'mon, you're just shook up 'cause Suzanne had a run-in with a pervert and now you're making a fairytale of it, out of something parents tell their kids so they don't stay out too late or sneak out their windows at night, no less. Whereas  _I_ , a learn'd man –" 

"You're gonna learn my foot up your ass," Davey mutters. "Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there. Jim'll tell you. Hey, back me up here." 

Bucky shrugs with a sheepish smile, his hands stuffed in his pockets. "Sorry, Dave, I'm more of a seeing is believing sort of guy." 

Davey punches him playfully in the arm. "What the hell, makin' me look like a mook in front of my kid brother." 

"You're right," Bucky says. "That's better left to you." 

"Why I oughtta . . ." Davey puts a fist up to Bucky's temple and the three of them crack up about it. They come to a stop between buildings. "Well, I better go put baby to bed–" Carl socks him in the shoulder. "–we'll see you tomorrow, Jim. Lock your door tonight." 

"Be seeing you," Bucky calls after them. He cups his hands around his mouth. "Look out, it's the Soldier!" 

Carl yells in a high-pitched voice, tripping all over himself exaggeratedly and flailing his arms and Davey cusses them both a blue streak. Bucky laughs and heads the other way. 

The back alleys always smell like smoke this time of late afternoon when the weather turns, people burning down old papers and magazines for a little warmth. Around him, people hurry on their way, their clothes not suited to this sudden shift in temperature, headed for hot dinners and fireplaces and maybe, if they're lucky, somebody to cozy up to at home. He tries to think of the whimsy of snow but his mind doesn't venture far beyond Steve's chapped lips and red cheeks, a scarf tied snug around his neck. About how they'll have to share a bed soon. About his cold skinny legs tangling with his own. 

He wonders if Steve's made it home from the pharmacy yet. Normally he gets off work around twenty minutes ahead of him but Mrs. Cunningham sometimes keeps the store open later on weekends. He decides to swing by, it being on his way anyhow. 

Mrs. Cunningham is locking up the store with her back to him. Her beady eyes, fluff of white hair and twitchy nature give her the air of a snow hare. "Oh, Jimmy," she cries when she turns around and sees him, one wrinkled hand fluttering to her chest and the other swatting him with a handbag. "You scared the blazes out of me!" She huffs, swinging her handbag in a wide arc to indicate the world at large. "My poor old heart can't take all of this creepy crawly nonsense! Some hoodlum put plastic spiders in the cash register and I nearly died on the spot." 

He smiles, holding his arm out for her to take. She takes it with an affected  _hm_ _ph_ , her nose in the air. "I'm sorry for scaring you, ma'am. But listen, I'd bet my life it wasn't Steve with the spiders." 

"Oh, you don't have to tell me that. No, Rogers is like a grandson to me. He saw how upset I was and he was ready to drag whoever did it out into the street and bloody his nose but no one would own up to it in front of me." 

"That's Steve." He sighs heavily. He won't be surprised to find himself nursing Steve's split lip and black eyes tonight. "Let me walk you home. I hear there's a lot of creepy crawly nonsense going around." 

Her place isn't far and she beckons him to lean down so she can kiss his cheek when they get to her building. 

"There aren't many nice young men like you and Steve these days," she tells him, patting his face. "Promise me you'll stay a sweet boy." 

"I'll do my best," he says with a smile, oddly touched. "You have a good night, Mrs. Cunningham." 

"You do the same." She turns and starts up the steps and Bucky heads down the sidewalk. 

"Oh, I almost forgot, Jimmy," she calls to his back. "Steve left just before closing time. He wouldn't let me call for a doctor but I think he was having a spell." 

Bucky's already broken into a run. The building is at the end of the block and he makes what would normally be a minute walk a fifteen second one, bounding up the steps and to their floor. He hits someone with his shoulder running down the hallway and throws back an apology. It feels like he ran into a brick wall, so he suspects he's hurting more than the other guy. 

He throws open the door. He could fall to his knees at the sight of Steve curled up on the couch, pale but free of scrapes or bruises. He's awake, looking a little dazed, but he's not coughing or unconscious or lying in an alley somewhere so Bucky takes it as a victory 

"Steve, hey." Steve hates dramatics more than anything so instead of just throwing himself at him and weeping in relief he casually closes the door, counting to five in his head before moving to the couch and sitting on the floor next to it. "How ya doin', killer?" 

"Not the best," Steve says hoarsely. His eyes swim a little, looking at something just to the left, then the right of Bucky like a drunk trying to fix his eyes on the right image. "Where'd you go?" 

"I was at work, kid," Bucky says, concern lancing through him. "Don't you remember?" 

He pushes Steve's bangs back from his eyes as an excuse to feel his forehead, but his hands are hot so he presses his lips to his temple instead. His skin is cool and dry. He lingers there a moment, selfishly, listening to Steve's whistling breaths. 

"No fever, that's good," he says, forcing himself to sit back on his heels. "What happened, d'you think?" 

Steve shrugs, moody. He hates his body on a good day, Bucky knows, but when it fails on him like this it just serves to remind him how he's trapped inside it. 

"Started coughing bad down at the store and had to leave. Couldn't get enough air and conked out in the street." 

"Christ, Stevie. How long were you out?" Steve's glaring off at nothing like he wants to disappear so he says, "They coulda snatched you up and made you join the circus." 

Steve laughs just a little. "To pick popcorn out of the seats, maybe." He shoots him a look under his lashes, stuck together from coughing-induced tears. "I guess you wouldn't come see me anymore if you had to pay fifty cents to get in the door, huh?" 

"I'd come see you," Bucky says solemnly. "Steve, how long were you out?" 

"I don't know. Probably not too long. I woke up when you were carrying me." 

Bucky shakes his head. "I didn't carry you." 

Steve looks at him like he's the one not making sense. "You did. You found me and carried me home, ya lump." 

"No I didn't," Bucky insists. "I ran into Mrs. C and she told me you left sick, and I came straight here." 

Steve blinks at him. "Well, I don't know, Buck. Some fella who looked like you brought me here and gave me some water." He points to the foot of the couch. "Stood there till I stopped coughing." He scrubs his hand over his face and groans. "Dunno, maybe I was out of it and seeing your face where it wasn't, everything was kinda fuzzy, but I do know I didn't get here on my own." 

Bucky sits a minute with his hand on Steve's chest to feel the rapid but present beat of his heart, torn between staying with Steve and looking for his good Samaritan. 

Steve decides for him, taking his hand and squeezing it before throwing it back at him. "I'm alright now. Quit hovering, your ugly mug's gonna start me off again." 

"I should find this guy," Bucky says, standing. He thinks of the man he'd passed in the hallway. "Shit, I think I saw him, kind of. Built like a brick shithouse?" 

Steve shrugs. "Looked like you, s'all I know." 

"I'll be right back." He pauses in the doorway. "You sure you're alright?" 

Steve throws a shoe at his head. 

"Right!" Bucky grins and ducks out the door. 

There's nobody in the hall but the Edwards kids playing cops and robbers and they tell him they hadn't seen anybody else around. He goes down to the street and walks up and down, ducking into bars and the few shops that are still open, looking down alleyways, but every guy he asks doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. He's about to give up and turn around when a slip of paper flutters down just before him. He catches it in his palm. 

It reads  _Tell him_ _how bad you want him._ _How much you need him._ _Don't wait until it's too late_ _._ _Don't be a fool Bucky._  

It's his own chicken scratch handwriting. 

He looks up. The building beside him has been condemned for years, and the windows of the upper stories are shuttered. When he looks to his side all there is to see is his gutted reflection in the splintered glass. 

 

**December 1, 2014**  

"I don't mean to upset you," Bucky says. "I just thought you deserved to know." 

Steve sits staring at nothing. 

He goes on, "So keep that in mind before you get attached or anything stupid like that. It's not like I'm a real person just because I look like him. I'm just a thing they manufactured to kill people for them, see." Under his breath he says, "And I can't even do that right." 

Bucky stands, plucks the wrapper out of Steve's slack grip and sweeps the powder up into a dust pan he hadn't realized he owned. 

"You don't have to do that," Steve says. His voice sounds like it's scraped out of his throat. 

"Shut up," Bucky says absently. "I have claws and teeth bigger than your head. I can do whatever I want." 

"You do?" 

"Mmhmm." Bucky goes to the fridge and takes out an apple, shoves it into Steve's hand. "There wasn't a goddamn thing in here but a can of tomato soup from 2012 and some spoiled milk. I know you think you can survive on self-righteousness but it doesn't work like that, okay? When's the last time you consumed something nonalcoholic?" 

"How'd you know –" 

"Could smell it." 

"I don't know. Couple days ago." 

"I'll make you an omelet," Bucky announces. "Eat that while I cook." 

Steve watches him moves around the room like he owns it, like he's been here dozens of times. Then again, he realizes he probably has. "When's the last time you consumed something nonhuman?" 

Bucky barks a startled laugh. "You think you're pretty funny, huh?" He turns around and settles into cooking. For a while it's quiet except for the clang of the pan over the stovetop, eggs cracking on the side of the stove. 

"I made it quick," Bucky says abruptly. 

Steve waits for him to elaborate. When it becomes clear he's not going to, he says, "The eggs?" 

"Daly and Dr. Fischer." Steve sucks in a breath. "I'm sorry you had to see what you did." 

"B – Soldier. You tore that guy apart. He was mutilated." 

Bucky flips the omelet into the air and catches it with a spatula, switching hands midair. "I put a bullet between his eyes. The rest was to set an example." 

"An  _example_? To who? For  _what_? You can't–" 

"Anyone tries anything on you, that's what's going to happen to them." 

He says it like he's reading the weather report. 

"The good doctor didn't get the memo, I guess," he continues. "I bet I know what you're thinking. I bet you're thinking they deserved a fair trial, and anyway, Fischer wasn't even trying to kill you specifically. But I tell you, she had plans for you. There's a lot you don't know about. People are chomping at the bit to be known as the one who did Steve Rogers in. They've got a bid on the black market just short of a billion for your fucking organs." He turns away from the stove, his eyes boring into him. "You're thinking I should've let them kill you." 

Steve only shrugs. 

Bucky turns away again. "Eat your apple," he says roughly. 

Steve compulsively takes a bite. Begrudgingly takes another. Maybe he was pretty hungry. 

Bucky plates the omelet and sets it in front of him, standing over him until he finishes the apple and has a bite of the eggs. He moves to the middle of the room, hovering between the table and the door. 

"I have to go," he says. "Are you going to let me?" 

Steve swallows a bite wrong, coughs until his face is red. "I'm not going to fight you, if that's what you mean. But I . . . I don't want you to . . ." He looks up at him helplessly. 

"I know," Bucky says. "But if my word means anything, I swear to you I never hurt civilians. I would never hurt anybody if I didn't have to, or if they. Got ahold of me again. I swear it." 

"That's not what I . . . Got ahold of you?" 

"Hydra," Bucky says simply. 

Steve's newfound appetite leaves him. The fork clatters to the table, forgotten. "Hydra," he echoes. 

Bucky nods. 

"Hyrda's gone, Soldier. They're not ever going to– what?" 

Bucky's laughing, shaking his head. That smile . . . Steve has to blink away tears. Bucky looks at him, and he is smiling but his eyes hold that animal fear they did in the dream on the lake, and there's something intensely sad about it hitting Steve like a punch in the throat, more of an itching feeling than an ache, sadness digging into his chest. 

Bucky turns to the door for a moment, and when he turns around again the smile's gone like it was never there. 

"If you promise not to be so careless," he says, "and I promise to lay low, will you let me go?" 

Steve stands and slowly walks to him. Bucky doesn't move so Steve stops just in front of him. 

"You can go if you want to," Steve says. "But I don't want you to." 

"Because you really want to lock me away somewhere," Bucky says. 

"No –" 

"It won't work." His shoulders slump and he looks at the floor. "I've tried it before. Unless the technology has improved, you might as well try to catch smoke in your hand." 

Steve takes a risk and puts his hand on Bucky's arm just above the elbow. "I want you to stay with me, Soldier. Don't . . . I don't want you to leave. But I won't make you stay." 

"It doesn't matter what I want to do." Bucky wrenches his arm away and backs up until his back hits the door. Like Steve's the dangerous one in the room. "It's safer if I'm on my own. I have bad days, I . . . forget." 

"Forget what?" 

"That I don't want to hurt anyone." 

"So stay with me. I'll remind you, every minute if I have to. I'll do anything." 

Bucky sneers at him. "You think it's so simple. So cut and dry. You can't do it all, you know." 

Steve shrugs. "Most things, not all." 

Bucky pushes off the door and stalks to him, a predatory look in his eyes. Steve stands his ground but all that means is Bucky grabs him and slams him back against the door. His head hits so hard against the wood he's dizzy but, lovesick fool that he is, he still isn't afraid. 

"I've lost everything without warning more times than I can count," Bucky says, voice shaking. His face is close enough to Steve's their noses bump together and the breath ghosting across his lips is so cold. "Do you know what you're up against?" 

Without warning, the fangs come out and he lunges in to Steve's neck. Steve grabs Bucky's shoulders instinctively, whether to shove him away or pull him closer he doesn't know, doing neither, just gripping skin. The fangs just press there, stinging the skin with cold but not yet breaking it. Bucky's just breathing. 

 _If I bit down . . ._  

 _Oh no,_  Steve thinks, squirming against the door. "Soldier?" 

Bucky pulls away after a pause. "There are thousands of ways I could kill you without making an effort, do you understand that? Or do you think just because you're–" His thickened voice falls away and he looks at him disbelievingly like his chest isn't heaving too. "Jesus Christ, are you hard?" 

"I can't help it," Steve says miserably, angling his hips away. "You going to leave me or bully me?" 

Bucky doesn't leave. Instead he moves closer. His breath puffs fast and short against Steve's neck. "Don't make it sound like that. I'm leaving, I'm not leaving  _you_." He pulls back and looks at him meaningfully. "Steve, I'm nobody. I'm nothing." 

Steve whimpers and covers his mouth with his hand, entire body wracked with a dry sob. "Say it again." 

Bucky's eyes snap to his. "I'm nothing." 

"Not that, goddammit." 

Bucky blinks, then tears his gaze away, scowling at the floor. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, I . . ." 

"Please." 

Bucky lets out a loud, shaky breath. "Steve." 

"Say it again." 

"No – Steve." 

"Again." 

"No." 

"Just one more time, Soldier." 

Bucky tentatively lowers his forehead to Steve's shoulder and breathes into his shoulder, "Steve. Steve Steve Steve. Satisfied?" 

"Not even a little. Are you?" 

He feels Bucky shake his head. 

"You're not making this any easier, you little shit," he whispers. 

He lays a hand at Steve's waist, then jerks it back, but Steve takes his wrist and holds him there, knowing he's strong enough to pull away if he wants to, at least physically. Bucky seems to forget himself then, wrapping his other arm around his back and pulling them tightly together. He pants against his neck like he's been running, rubbing his cheek against him like he's trying to get inside his skin. 

"Do I need to make you afraid of me?" he asks, and it's so at odds with how he's smearing himself over Steve that he has to stifle a laugh. 

He says, "You can't. But you can try." 

"Steve . . ." Bucky's mouth twists at the slip-up. 

"C'mon, do it." Steve bares his neck. Bucky doesn't quite kiss his neck, just holds his parted lips there. "You know you can do anything you want to me." 

Square human teeth graze over Steve's Adam's apple and Bucky huffs a laugh. "Why do you think I'm trying to get away from you, dumbass." He takes a step back, holds Steve at arm's length. "I'm not the guy you're talking about," he says, unable to meet his eyes. 

"Aren't you?" Steve grabs him by the scruff of his neck and shakes him so he'll look up. "You killed for me. You care if I eat or not. You're rubbing up on me like a cat. When you were a wolf you licked my damn face. Why?" 

He glares at him. "The wolf does what it wants." 

"The wolf didn't go grocery shopping." Steve cups his face. The itching sadness in his chest spreads and settles into an ache when Bucky's eyes shut and he rubs into his touch like he's starved for it. Maybe he is. "I'll do whatever you want, I'll call you by whatever name you tell me to, but don't pretend you don't know me." 

"Knowing isn't the point. I'll forget you again, I always do." 

"But you remember," Steve says. "Don't you?" 

"But I'm not . . . How do I make you understand?" Bucky sets his jaw, the ghost of George Barnes, and holds his arm out straight. "I'm close, but I'm not your Bucky." He scratches himself. 

"What are you doing?" Steve's voice rises as Bucky digs in and peels back a long strip of skin from his wrist. "Stop it. Fucking stop it!" He grabs his left hand and slams it against the wall, expecting to find bloody tissue and twitching muscles. 

There's no blood. If he has veins, they're plates of silver metal. 

Bucky easily pulls away from his slackened grasp and rips away more synthetic skin, dropping it to the floor as he goes. The prosthetic emerges slowly, flashing dully in the low light. A red star is printed like a property stamp to his shoulder and that's where he stops, staring Steve down defiantly. 

"Okay," Steve says. "So you're telling me you're a robot now." 

Bucky's eyebrows shoot up and then he laughs. "Jesus, you're a stubborn son of a bitch." 

"And you care about me a little too much to be a fucking product, alright? Maybe you're different, maybe you're a completely different person now, but don't tell me you don't know me." 

Bucky stands there, frozen and tense like a cornered animal. Steve moves away from him to give him space. Bucky notices and scoffs, rolls his eyes. He stares at Steve a long moment, chewing his lip. 

"I'm going to kiss you," he announces. 

Steve's eyes widen. "Oh – okay, Soldier, whatever, I mean, do what you have to–" 

Bucky reaches up with his right hand and tugs his head down, holding his chin in place with the left. Steve holds his breath as Bucky carefully kisses his forehead. 

He leans back and brushes Steve's wayward hair away from his face. 

"Look at you. All grown up and you still need somebody to take care of you," he says with that sad smile. "Damn me to hell, but I guess that's gotta be me." 

Bucky steps back completely and holds a hand over one eye. "Boss man's going to be giving you a call tomorrow morning and assigning you a new mission. I can help. You'll be hearing from me again, so don't worry." Bucky chucks him under the chin and points a finger at him. "Don't do anything stupid until then. And don't follow me." 

He goes to the door. Steve doesn't follow him. He pauses with his hand on the knob. 

"I don't remember much, but I remember, okay?" He turns halfway so Steve can only see him in profile. "But I don't lie. Your Bucky is gone. I'd give my other arm and a lot more to be the one you want, but they killed him a long time ago. Try to understand." 

He opens the door and closes it quietly behind himself. Steve holds the doorknob a long time but does as he's told. He doesn't follow. 

On the other side of the door, Bucky presses his forehead to where he knows Steve's pressing his and listens to him cry for as long as he can stand. 

 

**Jan** **uary 1, 199** **5**

The Fieldings don't host a New Year's party for the first time since they were first married. Their son and his pregnant wife and their little daughter have come to stay for the holidays and the household glows with warmth and good humor. 

The little girl dreams of angels dancing on a ring of clouds. One of them falls and slips away, stepping into the child-proofed guestroom. A little pink bear with hearts across its belly is plugged into the wall and casts a low light into the room, enough for the escaped angel to find the door. 

Low voices and laughter emanate from the kitchen, but he's not interested in that. He moves on silent feet past a crackling fire to the back of an armchair. 

The target has fallen asleep in front of the television, a commercial for chocolate flickering on the screen. Her feet are tucked beneath her, her glasses slid low on her nose. Her chin is propped on her hand, a smile lingering on her face. Inside the locket around her neck is the code to the weapon that is nearly ready to take out every Hydra base in eastern Europe, which is what he's really after, but they can't let this kind of mind go. He reaches out to snap the locket from its chain. 

The TV moves on to a city street, a voice welcoming him back to  _Dick Clark's New Year's_ _Rockin_ _' Eve_. A shimmering multicolored ball is presented for a moment before moving to a silver-haired man with a microphone. 

The locket is secured in his vest. He lays a hand on her shoulder. 

"Folks, it's the happiest time of the year," the old man in the television says. "We're here celebrating and having a good time, and I hope you at home are doing the same. With all of the festivities it's easy to forget it's been fifty years since the death of the man who made it all possible." 

He doesn't know why he's staring. He doesn't know why he recoils from her skin growing cold beneath his hand, even through her thick sweater – death is a simple fact; it's what he was made for. A vulture doesn't shy away from carnage, it picks the eyeballs from the skull and chews and swallows and feels nothing – He doesn't know why he gasps when the TV cuts to a slideshow of a man he doesn't know. 

"Steve Rogers gave his life taking down a Hydra plane half a century ago today. Half a century, and still we remember his sacrifice." 

 _Steve, Steve, Steve._  

As the man speaks of humble beginnings and indomitable courage, photos flash across the screen: the blonde man in a red-white-and-blue costume waving to a crowd; a frail young man who can't possibly be the same person standing shirtless, face grim, as though posing for a mug shot; the man laughing in an army uniform, another laughing man in uniform turned towards him. 

He reaches up and touches his own face. Notices for the first time in years his own nose, his eyes, his trembling lips. 

"Gamma?" 

The child is peering around him at the woman in the chair. He doesn't know why, but he does not want her to see. He doesn't stop her. She doesn't understand anyway. She looks up at him with frightened, sleepy eyes. 

Voices in the kitchen rise in question, having heard the little girl, asking her what she's doing out of bed. He moves towards the guest bedroom, the closest doorway. 

"And though he might not have carried the monumental title of Captain America, we must never forget the sacrifice of James Buchanan Barnes–" 

He sobs as he heaves himself through the door and into a mass of waiting grunts. He blocks the tranquilizer with the left arm; it tears the skin but falls away, ineffective. He uses it again to grab one of the grunts by the neck and use his body as a sort of scythe, knocking the others aside into a heap. The two unarmed technicians press themselves against the far wall. Their training washes away with the proximity of the Soldier. 

"Code 7414," one of them yells at the one-way glass. "This is a 7414!" 

"Apprehend him," a voice on the other side says with the auditory tone of a shrug. 

"Mr. Pierce," the same tech cries, scandalized at his own apparent expendability. The Soldier rips the tech's head from his shoulders like tissue paper and volleys it at the glass. It lands on base of the neck and sticks momentarily before sluggishly sliding down to the floor. 

"Damn," the voice says. "You think you hire good people, but they just get more worthless as the years go on. Alright. If I have to do everything myself, so I must." 

The door opens. The Soldier looks up briefly. He doesn't remember the phrase but he's giving him the benefit of the doubt. 

That familiar face. His blonde hair is graying at the temples and his crow's feet get deeper and deeper every time he sees him. They're far more pronounced now than when he last saw him, but it hadn't seemed that long ago. Now that he knows the difference he sees this man is far different from –  _Steve, Steve, Steve_  - from the man's on the television and it's sliding into place slowly, a tortoise assembling a thousand-piece puzzle –  _Rogers, Rogers, Rogers_  - this Pierce is a monster, an impostor, a thing wearing –  _Steve, Steve, Steve_  - wearing  _his_  face, his stolen skin stretched tight over rotten, corrupted flesh. 

"Soldier, at ease," he says in that stern and stolen voice that's such a remarkable imitation, such a studied mockery. "You're confused again," like someone talking to a misbehaving puppy. He's so caught up in this well-practiced charade, so comfortable and arrogant, he almost doesn't react to the Soldier moving closer until he's upon him. 

"Seven four–" 

The left fist connects with his face and it's too late for him. An alarm blares as the Soldier hacks at the face until it's a thick paste; the skin will never be stolen again. The Soldier is satisfied as the twelve tranquilizers protruding from the back of his neck kick in and he succumbs to silence. 


	8. If I Didn't Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve receives his mission along with some staggering information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heed the warnings at the end!

**Friday the 13** ** th ** **, October, 1938** **?**

The door it's been staring at for hours blusters open and the target stumbles out clutching his throat. As it watches, his face turns mottled red, then blue. He makes it around the corner before he sinks to his knees in a narrow alley, coughing up phlegm on the dirty ground between his hands.

It stands from the bushes it's been crouched in and stalks towards him from behind. The target's multitude of illnesses may well do its job for it, but it needs to be sure.

His coughing has gone silent, his face turned marble with lack of oxygen. His mouth moves around the soundless wheezes and while one hand supports him the other claws at his throat, then beats at his chest, trying to get air.

The Soldier watches this bemusedly. Surely its interference is unnecessary?

The target looks up at it with glazed, unseeing eyes.

"Buh – Buh –" The target's eyes stare at something past it, through it. "Buck –  'm sorry."

He wilts lower, lower to the ground, mouth gaping as if it surprises him that the cement is so close to his face.

The Soldier has a feeling. Clawing at its own throat from the inside much like the target had on the outside, struggling to get out.

Rage.

It doesn't know why. The target lying motionless at his . . .  _its_  feet has done nothing. All it was told was that this man was a threat to their cause and he should be put down before he could become truly dangerous.

It's on its knees. It's so close to him. It can't hear his heartbeat.

A howl bubbles and dies in its throat. It rears back a clawed fist to exorcise the feeling – to make sure the target is truly eliminated.

**December 2, 2014**

The Soldier hadn't lied. At eight a.m. exactly there's a knock on the door. 

"I don't think there's any point in playing pretend, do you, Captain?" Sharon Carter asks. She's crisp in a dark pantsuit and smells like coffee. Steve's wearing nothing but pajama pants with the Hulk printed on them.

"No, there's not."

"Good." Steve doubts being made is a high point in one's career, but she is the height of professionalism, he has to give her that. She doesn't even glance at the pants. He thinks there might be an old ketchup stain on them. "Fury wants to see you. He's concerned that you're not answering your phone."

The  _fucking_  phone. "Yeah, there was a, ah . . . complication. You can tell him I'll be right up."

"Sure." She tilts her head, frowning. "You doing alright?"

"I didn't sleep last night," he says, scrubbing at his bruised-feeling eyes. Best to be honest where he can. "There's been a lot on my mind lately." Before she can say anything else, he adds, "Thanks for letting me know, Sharon. I'll be getting a new phone today, I know you signed up to be my babysitter, not my secretary."

He quietly shuts the door and throws on some clothes that don't feature stains or any of his coworkers.

***

He shows up to Fury's office looking like a bum but less half-dead than he had first thing in the morning. He tries out being chipper to offset the bags under his eyes and three-days' worth of beard.

"What's the word, boss? I'm on the edge of my seat here." Steve literally scoots to the edge of the seat and props his chin on his hands, his elbows on Fury's desk.

Fury eyes him suspiciously. "Cute doesn't suit you, Captain. You've been around Stark and company too long."

Steve waves a hand. "Eh." So maybe he'd laid it on a little too thick.

Fury gives him a long distrusting look before making a noise in the back of his throat and returning to business.

"You're familiar with Hydra."

If he were a better liar he'd at least try to act shocked but he doesn’t even flinch.

"Passably."

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, but they're not only still around, they're thriving. One of their programs is about creating efficient killers. For decades they've been utilized for assassinations but now I'm worried their next strike is the general public. I need you to get me information about those involved in the creation process, how it works, if it can be destroyed. You're to take out as many Hydra agents as you can. I want one alive. I don't want drones either, I want a brain. Understood?"

Steve thinks he does, but he's eyeballing what's under Fury's hand. "I might need a little more to go on."

Fury looks down almost ruefully before sliding a thick manila envelope across the heavily polished wood. Steve immediately takes it before Fury can change his mind. It's unlabeled and the first few pages feature the modest criminal record of a man named Frank Johnson, but six pages in the tune changes and he catches a damningly familiar phrase.

"Christ, this is . . ." He looks up at Fury but Fury just looks at him somberly, nodding to the file.

Steve flips through it silently, bile scratching his throat. Gritty black and white photos glare out of the page, some too ill-defined to make out more than vague shapes, a Rorschach test doomed to be sinister.

Others it's impossible not to piece together what's going on: blacked-out eyes, the shadow of a nose, an open mouth rounded on a scream. Teeth. A pitch halo of blood on a wall. Chains hooked to ceilings, metal implements lined on a rack.

There are words typed in blocky font taking up half of each page but they swim in his vision, they don't mean anything. Only the pictures get through.

A pair of women, each naked and sinking impossible teeth into the other's leg. A boy with a knife sunken into his neck to the hilt grips the bars of a cage, his mouth a gaping wound. A man missing an arm slumped in a chair, deep cuts scattered over his torso, covers his face with a hand covered in fur and sporting claws half a foot long.

Oh, Bucky.

"Rogers? Steve!"

The slap brings him back to the present.

Fury is standing over him, looking the most affected Steve has ever seen him.

"Sir?" Steve asks, wondering why his cheek is stinging and Fury is staring at him.

"You kept saying no, no, looked like you were going to hyperventilate." He takes a loud breath and backs up a step. "Look, I won't hold it against you if you can't take this on. This is fucked up shit the likes of which even I had trouble looking over when it first came to my attention. It's entirely your call."

Steve looks at the photo of the defeated man in the chair. "Oh, I'm taking the case. Be right back."

Without ceremony he bursts out of Fury's office, the door slamming against the wall a distant thud. A few agents passing in the hallway shoot him inquiring glances that go ignored. The bathroom is blessedly empty when he falls to his knees in front of a toilet, not bothering with the stall door, and vomits everything in his stomach. That done, he washes his hands and rinses his mouth out, straightens his clothes and goes calmly back to the office.

Fury's standing in the doorway talking to his assistant. He dismisses her and she shuts the door behind herself on her way out. Fury perches on his desk, not once taking his eyes from Steve.

"Sit." 

Steve remains standing. "I'm taking this case."

"So you said." Fury picks up something and takes a look at it before handing it to Steve. "You recognize this man?"

It's another file, much thinner. Far fewer pictures. On the third page Steve finds a small sepia shot of Bucky's blank stare.

"Yes." Steve's voice sounds far away to his own ears. "He's my best friend."

Fury sighs, rounding the desk to sit in his chair, leaning back. "I was afraid of that."

Steve doesn't bite back the ice in his tone. "Did you know."

"About the program, yes," Fury says, massaging his temple. "Every agent I sent in to investigate it was never seen again so after a few years and a few agents I realized I was just throwing my people away. Did I know about your friend, no. Not exactly. That file in your hand first came to my attention two years ago and it crossed my mind he looked like . . . Well, the resemblance was striking. And it's common knowledge they never found a body." He lowers his gaze a moment, giving Steve a minute. "But I didn't know, no. I'm sorry, Rogers. But if you're compromised . . ."

"Of course I'm compromised. You bet your ass I'm compromised,  _sir_. And I'm also your best bet for coming out of this in one piece. Did you ever send in someone enhanced? Did you ever send in someone who'd lost everything to these people?" He looks down at the file bending and crinkling in his hands and tucks it into his shirt before he accidentally destroys it. "I won't be any good to you doing anything else, not knowing this exists, not if I'm doing nothing to stop it. What are you afraid of, me compromising other agents? Send me alone."

"It's not just a question of endangering others, Rogers, I'm worried about you." They blink at each other. Fury barrels on, "You throw yourself around like you're indestructible as it is. It'd be irresponsible of me sending you in knowing how unlikely it is your coming out alive. I know damn well you're the only chance we have of shutting these monsters down, but I still don't like the odds." When Steve winces he says, "When I say monsters I'm not talking about the victims, Steve."

Steve takes a shuddering breath, deciding to ignore that, how easy he is to read. "Listen, Fury, I know how valuable an asset I am to SHIELD, I know what a risk this is. But if I die having gotten us even one step closer to annihilating these bastards it'll have been worth it."

Fury studies him a long time. Finally he raps his knuckles against the desk and sighs. "Don't make me regret this, Rogers."

"You better not," Steve says.

Fury glares at him. "I think I already am." He holds up a hand as Steve starts to protest. "I'll have an expert for you to catch you up to speed. Facts on paper are hardly ever the most accurate, and in this case? I can promise you they aren't. The information I've already provided is out of date and partly guesswork but it's really all we have."

"I'll make the best of it," Steve promises. He turns to go but changes his mind, coming back fully into the room and taking the seat across from Fury.

"Sometimes I think I died on the plane," he says. "That this is some last-second dream my brain's producing based on a science fiction book I read once, or an afterlife by a creator with a weird sense of humor. Other days I know I'm alive, and that I was brought back for a reason." He takes the file from his shirt and holds it up. "I think this is that reason. If I die doing this I want you to know it wasn't your fault. I was just doing what I was put here to do and I finished it and it's alright."

He nods, aware Fury wants to say something else to him, but leaving before he has a chance. He thinks Fury might have thanked him, or worse, told him he was proud to have known him, and he couldn't have stood that.

 ***

 He’s to meet his expert at a library outside of the city. He shows up early and waits outside, face tipped to the blank sky. A light dusting of snow hazes everything in mystical white. Dappled, cold sunlight winds around his bare throat like a caress and he closes his eyes.

When he opens them, Natasha is sitting next to him on the bench. He can’t tell if he’s surprised or not.

“Is the Winter Soldier a college course now.” Hope tinges his voice like rust, hard to form and easily flaked away.

She shakes her head with a slight smile, her red hair striking against the snow globe world around them.

“That still requires first-hand experience, unfortunately. I’m one of the last left.”

He blinks at her. Businesslike, she opens the file lying unassuming and plain in her lap.

“The program was started in 1912,” she says, her eyes pinned to the paper but she’s not reading from it. He knows. He’s read it three times front to back. “But there were no survivors. Not until 1945. Then they lost their collective shit and started experimentation on anything that moved.” She taps the file. “This is off record, there never was any physical documentation of this. But there were children.”

It all suddenly falls into horrifying place. “Oh no, Natasha. No."

She continues as though she hadn’t heard him. Her eyes gaze into a past he can’t see. “A certain number of children. There were never supposed to be more than one. It was a test, you get it?” Her face is a still mask, but there’s something in the eyes. He can almost see a terrible history flickering in the irises. “Just a test.”

She shakes her head, focusing on the file. She flips another page and traces something there. One corner of her mouth lifts.

"Some children were stolen from their beds." Steve's mouth opens but she shakes her head and he closes it again. "So they needed a control group. Their solution was test tube babies. They took some DNA from the handful of successful subjects and, well. Turns out those children were the only ones able to withstand the experiments." She takes a deep breath and snaps the file shut, looking over at Steve. "I don't know if you've picked up on this or not, but we're here to do a little studying."

The library is vast but there are few people save them. She leads him to the stacks in a far corner populated with armchairs and side table lamps. This section is dedicated to folklore and creatures of legend. Steve is disappointed but not overly surprised to find there are only four books shoved out of alphabetical order between the vampire and werewolf books. They take them and head over to a pair of chairs, and begin to read.

Natasha snorts after less than a minute. "That's wrong," she says. "This is bullshit. It says here Soldiers can slurp your soul through your eyes. It goes on to say their arrival is announced by the closest surfaces suddenly oozing slime. Who writes these?" She turns a page and outright laughs. "God, there are illustrations."

Steve leans toward her, elbows on his knees. He's not even through the first page of his book but it doesn't look any more promising. The author's name printed on the front of his, as is Natasha's, is apparently Roger James.

Apparently.

"How about you tell me some of the things they  _can_ do?"

"But this is so fun." She smiles, setting her book aside, then abruptly turns serious, considering her words. Finally, she says, "In some ways they're close to most people's conception of a ghost. They're highly metaphysical so sleep can be done on command but it's not necessary. They go through . . . I guess you could say a dissociative state when killing. You might roll your eyes at this, but they can transform into animals. Specific animals proficient at killing. This makes them more useful in deadly elements until the human body has fully given over to the Soldier."

Steve makes a strange sound at that and Natasha glances over, misunderstanding the look on his face. "You need to know this so you know what to expect, but your mission here isn't the Soldiers. I won't villainize them more than legend and Hydra itself already have, but they're only human in appearance, at least most of them. The older they are the less likely they are to retain any human traits. That's not to say the mind is completely erased. As far as I know, that's a bug they never fixed."

She fell silent a few moments, staring out of the window at the courtyard shrouded in white, her reflection's eyes blackened against the library's lights.

Eventually she turns back to Steve, continuing her list as though nothing had happened. "They have a way of traveling beyond the laws of physics," she says. "One could even . . ." What looks like pain flickers over his face but is gone as quickly as it had appeared. "One could move through time."

"Nat, did you . . ." He swallows, his throat clicking a few times. "Did you know any of them?"

"Only one personally." She takes up her file again and hands it to him. 

With surprisingly steady hands he opens it and several photographs fall into his lap. Two catch his attention first. One is a full-body snapshot of a man in profile, his features obscured by the sun and the poor quality of the camera. However, the painted star at his metal shoulder is distinctive.

The other, a grainy black-and-white photo of a young man with wicked eyes and a cocky grin, was taken on Coney Island over a lifetime ago.

Natasha takes this one from him. She looks down at it fondly.

"My father," she says.

**January 12, 1987**

Once he's learned how to behave the Soldier gains a few responsibilities beyond killing.

They send him into the kennels to break up a fight. He wades through a sea of yipping and wriggling pups to the bloody center. He reaches in with the left arm and yanks one up by the scruff.

The fox kit. She writhes in his grip and kicks her hind paws at his hand and he feels his lips curve up at the sight. He has no idea what the tic means. He swats his mouth to force the muscles to relax.

"Teeth to yourself, little fox," he tells her, tossing her back into the heap. She leaps onto his foot and nips at him.

"Яблоко от яблони недалеко падает," he mutters. His cheeks cramp again and he just doesn't understand it, or why he doesn't shake her off as he leaves the kennel.

He does know that most of the pups will soon be rounded up and never seen again. The domestic dogs like the pugs and the poodles are useless in their own way, the wolf and fox pups that are unable to make the switch back in another.

This one is different. She's stronger than the ones taken from the countryside and given the serum, but neither is she fit to become what he is. She has proven she can make the change back to the human child, but she refuses meat. It's been six years and her proper teeth still haven't come in. She can only go where her feet take her. She becomes aggressive when provoked but does nothing on command unless he himself gives the order, and he never orders her to do anything but eat and stay out of trouble.

He peers around. No one is monitoring him. He's ungrateful, he thinks, but he harbors a simmering hatred for all of them but the one he knows as Steve. Steve tells him everything they do is for the best, that a few children won't be missed in the grand scheme of things. That they feel no pain. The Soldier doesn't believe it, but then, he doesn't believe much.

He's never hidden anything from Steve before. The ingrained need to go to him and tell him what he's done is a physical urge. He turns back to the kennel. After two steps he forces himself to turn around again, taking the fox up and holding her tightly in his arms, and takes a step that takes them forty miles away on the outskirts of the nearest town.

The shock trigger embedded in his temple preventing escape explodes. The pain is nothing to him, but the threat to damaging his free thought has him gritting his teeth.

The fox has changed to the girl out of fear, her wide eyes taking in the thick copse of trees around them. They're on the slight swell of a hill. About a mile below they can see the lights of houses, even people moving around in their yards.

She speaks in the broken English he's taught her. "Where is this? Why are we here?"

He knows only in fits and starts. He can't waste speech. The electric shocks will soon take his ability.

"Go," he says, setting her down and giving her a gentle push. "Go now. Tell them you have no family, you're lost and hungry. Tell them to take you far from here."

"You will come with me," she says, taking his hand and pulling it.

"No. You will go alone."

Her eyes water in betrayal. She bites his hand fiercely, but her baby teeth do nothing but pinch. She can't access the fangs in this form.

"They will kill you," he grits out, struggling to retain the meaning of the words. "Do you understand?"

"No, no!" She clings to his leg. "Come with me."

"Go." He kicks her forcefully away. She stumbles and whimpers, her foot twisting on a root. Her tiny face twisted in pain incapacitates him more than the shock ever could. "Go!" he shouts.

She takes a step back, then another, another, sobbing. Her red hair is like blood in the dark.

He loves her. He doesn't know what love is. He can't protect her. He knows that more clearly than anything. Even as his memories of her are being wiped from his mind.

Just a dot on the edge of the woods, she begins running back to him. This is his last image of her before he's stepping back onto the grounds of the base. A swarm of guards armed with syringes fall on him and everything is blurred and vague as he's dragged into the chair. The voltage is pitched up to its maximum capacity. He will know nothing but what he's told for several years.

**December 2, 2014**

"They were testing him," Natasha says.

They're sitting in her car in the library parking lot. Natasha is shuffling through the pictures.

"They were fully aware he was attached to me. That was what they'd set out to know. If humans having undergone the serum could form new connections." As she finishes looking at a picture she'll set it down on the console and Steve will pick it up. They each have an even pile when she blows her hair out of her face and leans back against the headrest, reciting in a monotone voice, "An old couple named Romanov took me in. The man only called me Girly, but the woman was confused, she thought I was her granddaughter. She called me . . . You can probably guess."

Steve doesn't like where this is heading. "What happened?"

"I was with them for two weeks. They had a nephew who was taking his family to America and they were planning on sending me with them, but it was already too late. Hydra tracked me down. I think they knew where I was the whole time but wanted me to fall into a false sense of security. The Romanovs were both killed trying to save me. They gave me enough of a distraction for me to kill three of the agents sent to collect me. But there were twelve in all. The rest of them were outside, already dead when I escaped the house. It was assumed I killed them too, and the high-ups were impressed enough that when they found me they not only kept me alive, they put me into the Black Widow program. You know the rest."

She looks over at Steve who's studying a picture of the Soldier in the wolf form. His fur is shiny black, his eyes glowing red in the night-vision lens of the picture.

"See the resemblance," Nat deadpans.

He picks up one of the books he'd checked out, flipping it open to one of the illustrations of an eldritch demon with crazed eyes. "You clean up very well."

She smirks. "I knew I was right about telling you."

"You're a Soldier," Steve finally voices it, still a little in shock. "Who else knows?"

She shakes her head. "I am technically, yes. But I think as someone who was born as such and never received the serum, it's much easier to control. Most of the symptoms disappeared completely when I was a child. And other than Nick Fury, you're the only one who knows." She turns back to her photos, studying one. "And him."

"Was he who you were talking about? When you said you had lost someone."

She nods. "I was so young, and I don't even know his name, but he was all I knew. I held onto his memory for years. I had this dream he would come back for me. Sometimes I'd be in the middle of a hit or a training mission and I'd think I felt his presence and I would turn around, thinking this was it, he'd come back for me. But he never did. I never saw him again." She taps the well-worn file. "But it seems he's still out there."

"Nat . . . I don't know how to say this. I was talking about him too."

She looks at him in bewilderment. "I don't understand."

"My best friend, he fell of a train during the war. I assumed he died but . . . but Hydra had gotten to him already. He was their POW for months before I got him out and I think they must have given him his first dose of the serum then. And then, without me to come get him . . ." His voice breaks and he watches her features shift as she comprehends what he's saying. He turns away, pressing his forehead to the window.

Nat stares at him in stunned silence. Eventually Steve clears his throat and continues. "He was at my apartment last night. He remembers. I don't know how much, but he does, it's him, it's . . ." He starts to hand her the photo of the Bucky he'd known, the one with a shadow across his face that you wouldn't be able to see if you hadn't carried a similar photo in your pocket across the battlefields of Europe, if it hadn't been your own shadow. He stops himself, setting it gently aside. "I don't know if he's the same person I knew. In fact I doubt he is. But I still love him and he needs my help. He's been living on his own for a while from what I've pieced together, but Hydra's still got its hooks in him somehow and I'm not going to stop until they're all dead."

Natasha puts a hand on his shoulder. "Steve." She chews on her lip and turns her face to hide her wet eyes. After several minutes of swiping at her cheeks she says, "Tony was right."

A laugh is startled out of him and Nat laughs too, helplessly.

"You don't think we have to tell him, do you? We'll never hear the end of it."

"I won't if you won't," Nat says. Once they've sobered up she says, "I'll do anything I can to help. You know I would have anyway but you wouldn't have let me. Now that you know I'm in this just as much as you are. You can't tell me no now, can you?"

He wants to. "I'd feel better doing this on my own," he says honestly. "But I can't tell you I won't let you."

"Goddamn right you can't," she says, nudging him in the head. She sucks a breath in through her nose. "He follows me around, you know. I can't explain how I know it's him other than - well, who else would it be? I can never look straight at him, it's like he's always just in the corner of my vision. But he never approaches. He never speaks. I'm almost jealous of you." She nods past Steve before he says anything. "See for yourself."

He turns. Sure enough, a figure in the woods at the edge of the library sidesteps out of view. He follows it with his eyes and it's always just at the edge, no matter how fast he turns his head.

"Like a ghost," Steve breathes, turning back to her.

Natasha nods, jaw tight. "Like a ghost."

They turn back to the woods, but the figure has vanished completely.

**Friday the 13** ** th ** **, October, 1938?**

He's still shaking off the last effects of the sedatives, the blood of at least thirty men soaking his front. They hadn't had time to shock him before he came to and the memories –

He doesn't have much time.

The memories are inconsistent and dreamlike, but urgency like a pulse livening his veins has him sprinting down a city street, ignoring the screams and swerving cars around him. He's never been here – how could he? - but his feet know the way.

He finds the alley. Watches himself raise a hand aiming for the death blow.

His teeth tear into his own neck, yanking him away from the man crumpled on the ground. They continue to rip, striking bone and continuing until it crunches between his teeth. Claws jackknife into his chest and jerk down, a movement with enough force to disembowel a human man. He continues biting, a hand gripping his abdomen to keep himself in place. This sort of wound will heal. He continues to bite until the earlier version of himself stops growling and the last of his neck breaks. He pulls back, spitting out his own blood and bits of cartilage, in time to watch his own head roll to one side.

The man's chest isn't moving. He snaps back into action.

With a knowledge he shouldn't possess, he pumps the man's chest and breathes into his mouth until he coughs weakly and begins to stir. He eases him into his arms and stands, his feet again carrying him where they will.

The man blinks glossy blue eyes at him.

"Bucky?"

"Steve," he says without meaning to. "Sleep."

The man curls into his chest and sleeps the rest of the way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a mention of child death (it's not detailed but it's there), a plot twist that's probably too out-there, mouth-to-neck decapitation + Bucky/the Soldier being creepy. And also major character death in a way but not really?
> 
> Shout out to everyone still keeping up with this. I love comments, let me know what you think!


	9. Body And Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's mission goes sideways and backwards.

**December 10** **, 2014**

Like shedding a foreign but useful winter coat, it feels good to get back into the swing of things. 

(The swing: silent, barely a whisper in the still night. The thing: the shield. Into: so many Hydra skulls he stopped counting at thirty.) 

Natasha's carefully mapped-out path leading to one of the still-operational Hydra bases is littered with bodies by the third day and Steve is still slowly picking his way across the frozen countryside. In lieu of sleeping he works faster. 

The weather here is unforgiving; blood breaks off from beneath his fingernails like ice chips, sticks to his eyebrows and the beard he hasn't bothered ridding himself of. His skin feels flayed from the bone from cold and his body can't help but remember the ice. But another part of him feels only anticipation, and a childish hope. He turns to look over his shoulder more than once, sure he's not alone. 

He always is. 

The door of the base is just as Natasha had described: carved out of the base of a large tree. It has no handle, so he jimmies it open with his hand and uses the waning daylight to see inside. 

There's a narrow stairwell leading down into the dark. Without a second thought, Steve steps into it and hears the wooden door close behind him, sealing him inside the old oak. He waits a moment until his eyes have adjusted before feeling the extremely narrow walls and working his way underground. 

He's barely taken a step before he starts to hear noise rumbling up from what he judges to be at least a mile below. The sound of gears grinding, or teeth grinding, gnashing, guttural agony – mechanical or human? Steve throws himself down the spiraling stairs to find out, weapon drawn. 

Nat had recommended a flamethrower and dynamite. The plan is to eliminate all immediate threats and blow the place to hell from back on ground level. 

Taking a sharp turn, Steve sees, several dozen feet below, rushing directly towards him, a wave of – no, that can't be right. 

What seem to be several five- and six-feet tall insects missing their heads are rushing up the stairs, emitting high-pitched squeals like slaughtered pigs. Steve raises the flamethrower and burns them, waiting for their charred corpses to fall back before kicking them aside and continuing his descent. 

This repeats for the entire mile, the noise below steadily growing louder. By the time the staircase ends and he's on solid ground and hit hard with the smell of death, all is silent. 

He's in what appears to be a dimly lit open-plan office. Desks, mostly upturned, and computers, all broken, litter the floor. A few computers are mounted on the wall; the screens are smashed and smoking, wires stuttering a few halfhearted sparks. 

Bodies are everywhere. Insects and humans alike. Slumped over prone desks. Scattered across the floor. Impaled on the light fixtures. Suspended in the rafters. Most of them have guns clenched in their hands and shocked expressions on what remains of their faces. He freezes when he realizes the faces are all the same. 

In the far corner, beyond the slaughter, someone begins to whistle. 

Steve wades through the slick mess of identical Hydra agents and the rubble of office equipment. In front of the last surviving computer that Steve had failed to notice, a wing-backed chair swivels from side to side, side to side. The screen shows a progress bar, squares of glowing red ticking steadily across. Steve follows the cheerful whistle until he's standing a foot from the chair. He raises the flamethrower. 

 _Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you . . ._  

"Surrender and I won't kill you," he lies. 

The whistling stops. 

"What's so important on that computer?" 

"I'm playing Candy Crush," Bucky says. The chair spins around. 

Bucky – the Soldier, Steve corrects himself – is covered in blood, but it's highly unlikely any of it's his. He's in his fully human form, but the claws are still out. A piece of meat is stuck in one of them. The Soldier catches him staring and promptly pops it into his mouth, chewing as he spins back to face the computer. 

"I'm downloading the files, if you're still wondering. I want to know what Zola's hive is up to these days. You just missed him, by the way. A heartwarming reunion was had by all." He turns his head and spits. 

"Zola." Steve echoes. He wishes he could be surprised, but he's quickly realizing he's up for anything at this point. "How did he escape?" 

The Soldier is quiet for a minute, then huffs. "Today or in general? The answer for both is: he has his ways. Elusive bastard." 

"Or he slipped through time," Steve says, disappointed the Soldier hadn't told him himself. 

The Soldier stares at him, then nods. Gritting his teeth together, he turns back to the screen. 

"I guess a little spider whispered that in your ear," he mutters. 

 He pulls up another tab and Steve leans in to watch, expecting to see a video or an article related to Zola and Hydra's regeneration. 

The Soldier is playing Candy Crush. 

"It takes a while," he tells Steve gruffly. 

"Of course," Steve says, coming around the chair and leaning a hip on the desk. "So." 

The Soldier scowls at his virtual candy and doesn't look up. "So." 

"This was my mission, Soldier. You wanna tell me why you're doing my job for me?" 

"You wouldn't have done it right," the Soldier says smoothly. "I told you I was going to help you, didn't I?" 

"You told me you'd help, not leave me with nothing to do." He looks around at the corpses in the base. Something drips steadily from the ceiling. He chooses to ignore that. "They were Soldiers." 

"Boy, nothing gets past you." The Soldier turns from his game and props his chin on his hand, moody gaze fixed on nothing. "Not sure on the why yet, but it looks like Zola is creating an army of clones. Pretty stupid, considering roaches ain't good for anything but multiplying and dying. But don't ask me, I guess with that much evil ambition there's no room for common sense." He turns and eyes Steve. "I've got this. Your people want a live one, I'm guessing? I'll give you one and you can go home." 

Steve bristles. "This is my mission. You can watch my back but I'm not going to let you hold my hand through this because you think I can't do it." 

"It's not like it's some moral failing that you're not a match for a fucking monster, pal," the Soldier says harshly, standing up and getting into his face. "You want to jump into a dumb fight you know you can't win, be my guest." 

It sounds so much like something Bucky would have said to him when they were young and a cough could mean death it should be laughable. 

"I'm not finished," Steve says. "And I'm not going to stop." 

What he can't, won't say is that it feels too goddamn good to watch the life leave the eyes of each Hydra agent as he kills them. And if the Soldier isn't going to go home with him, what does it matter if he does?

He turns to the exit, experimentally kicking a dead Soldier. It bleeds white, bulbous black eyes bulging like a puffer fish. 

"Come with me," he says without looking up. "We could be a team again. I understand if you don't want anything else from me. Honest, I do." 

"Steve, you don't understand–"

The computer beeps wildly and a sickly green screen swallows everything else. 

A synthesized voice intones, "System set to self-destruct in three, two–" 

"Oh Christ," Steve and the Soldier say at the same time, each reaching out to grab the other. 

One second, the world is swallowed by fire. Steve sees a flash of an explosion, ash and smoke, and the next, his knees hit hard, cold ground and birdsong filters down through the thick canopy of trees above. The echo of the explosion roars in his ears, so loud it's silent. 

"Bucky," he yells before he realizes he's clutching at nothing. He whips his head around but he's alone. There's no body, at least. There's nobody. He pats himself down but he's not bleeding, not even bruised. 

He's surrounded by trees. A sunrise smears the eastern sky and the ground beneath him is muddy, like a rain has recently fallen. 

"What the fuck," he breathes. He gets to his feet and cups his hands over his mouth and yells for all his serum-enhanced lungs are worth: "SOLDIER!" 

The treetops whisper together as groups of birds shoot into the sky. Somewhere there's the sound of a child laughing. There is no reply. 

He searches the surrounding area for what must be an hour, but there's no sign of the base, no sign of the Soldier. He tamps down a rising panic attack and begins to walk. 

Within two minutes the sound of voices grows louder. He itches for his shield, but there's nothing for it. He sees a clearing in the trees and steps out of the shallow woods. 

"Hey, mister, you're dressed funny." 

He looks down. In the space before the dirt from the woods gives to grass, a group of freckle-faced kids in newsboy caps and overalls are playing marbles. They stare at him dubiously, one gaping at the blood splattered over the front of his black stealth suit. 

"Jeez, you're bleeding a bucket!" he cries. 

Steve blinks hard. The kid looks a hell of a lot like Davey Mitchell from back home. He must have a grandkid or a great-grandkid, or else Steve is just on the edge of losing his fucking mind which he figures is far more likely. 

"It's alright," he tells the kids, voice foreign to his own ears, "It's not mine." He looks around, and jeez, indeed. 

People are lined up in front of a hot dog cart; two women chat on a park bench, their Long Island accents thick enough to cut with a knife; an old man teaches a little girl how to fly a kite. 

"I'm in Prospect Park," he says aloud. 

"Well at least you ain't in Jersey!" one of the boys whoops. The others fall down laughing. 

Steve turns in circles, sure he'll wake up on the floor of the base in Russia any second, but he's in New York. Brooklyn fucking New York, and the Soldier is gone. 

He breaks into a run. 

"No," he gasps when he sees the street. "Not possible." 

A spanking-new '29 Bentley honks at him where he's frozen in the street. 

"Get outta the road, blockhead! Some of us got places to be!" 

"No," and he's laughing because surely any second he'll wake up or Bucky will snake his arms around him from behind and they'll be twenty-four, sixteen, six again and they'll be together and then he'll wake up and Bucky will be dead and he doesn't know how much more of this he can – 

The apartment building the Barnes had lived in had been torn down in the sixties, he's heard, to make way for a Macy's, and is now a sushi restaurant. There it is, nonetheless. 

The front door opens and he watches himself jump off the stoop, toothpick limbs flailing. 

"You sure love breakin' yourself up," a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Bucky grumbles at the top of the steps. "Gonna need a cane by the time you're fifteen, you keep it up." He rolls his eyes with an impressiveness Steve hasn't seen since Natasha before making the jump himself. He falls wrong and topples over, laughing the whole way down. Steve watches himself try to catch him and follow him down, both of them laughing, Bucky rubbing at his knee. 

"Who's breaking themselves up now, ya goof?" 

"Well I'm not takin' no pleasure in it," Bucky groans, getting to his feet and hauling Steve to his. "I'm gettin' old, kid." 

"I promise to always remember to give you your pills and cranberry juice, old man," Steve jokes as they round the building towards the back. 

Steve follows them numbly, unaware of his feet on the pavement or the blood dripping from his palms where he's dug in his fingernails or the shrill ringing in his ears. He stands in the shadows watching them until the sun sets and the other neighborhood kids materialize from alleyways on the other side of the lot. 

Walter Foley clicks a flashlight on beneath his chin even though it's still broad daylight. "You chumps ready to chuck your lunch?" 

"You couldn't spook your grandma, Foley," Ted Holloway snorts and a friendly scuffle breaks out. 

Steve crouches down and watches his past unfold in front of him. He's dead; he must be. But then, where is Bucky? His body is reduced to icy panic, and he's frozen with indecision; he's lost. 

He remains there until it's truly dark and the kids' eyes are getting heavy and Martin O'Malley has long since taken Janey home. Then he wanders back onto the street, searching every shadow and empty space for the Soldier. 

"Why did you send me here," he mutters. "What am I supposed to  _do_." 

He heads the way he came. There's almost no one in the park but the down-on-their-luck folks that sleep there on mild nights. He wishes fervently he had some money on him. Itn this time, it's almost July and his teeth chatter together, goosebumps risen on his arms. Frost covers the ground, then snow. A light dusting begins to fall the longer he walks, within minutes so heavily he can hardly see a foot ahead of him. He's ankle-deep in snow. 

A little further up ahead, a dim outline in the blizzard, the Soldier calls his name. 

Before he can respond, a bag is tied tight over his head and the world disappears. 

 

**December 10, 2014**

The Soldier crashes into Steve's apartment alone. For the span of a stunned five seconds, he doesn't believe it. 

He returns immediately to the explosion. He pushes through fire and screams until his voice is hoarse, but he knows, somewhere deep in the marrow, in the last human bit of himself that clings to him and screams for its life: Steve isn't there. It can't be true, the implications point to the impossible,but he's not there. He moves to above ground where the snow has begun to devour the world and he screams a little more because Steve isn't there. 

Then, a shape in the distance: the Soldier's legs threaten to give out. 

"STEVE!" 

The figure begins running and the Soldier runs to him. Steve looks haggard and terrified and like he's aged within the moments they've been apart and he knows –  

He watches a pair of hands pull a cloth bag down over Steve's head and quickly as blinking, Steve is gone. 

 

**December 10** **, 2014** **?**

"If we don't get out of this–" 

"Quiet." 

Steve sits across from the Soldier, both of them tied to wooden chairs, the room so narrow their knees are interlocked and they have no choice but to lean forward, their foreheads nearly touching. Steve works his wrists against the bonds doggedly. 

"I'm going to–" 

"Don't tell me what you're doing," the Soldier snaps without opening his mouth. He is utterly still, not even blinking. Steve would think he was dead if sweat wasn't beading from his face. 

"I thought nothing could hold you." The binds begin to give. Wetness soaks the palms of his hands and he forces himself to struggle less and focus more. 

"Something can," he mutters in a rush. "Now shut up. Don't look at me." 

Steve turns his gaze to the ceiling but sees only his feet. Beside them is a lightbulb suspended on a string, swinging wildly and slicing the room in contrasting light and shadow, back and forth. When he looks down, he sees the ceiling. It's a mirror, and in its image he's alone and hardly recognizable. He can see the Soldier in his peripheral vision wherever he looks. 

He's lashing from side to side, his neck and bare chest covered in blood. Thorny vines wrap around his torso and tear the flesh and sink below the skin. His lips are peeled in a snarl and his fangs clash against each other as he snaps his jaw. When Steve looks at him fully he's motionless, his gaze flat and empty. 

"Don't look at me," he repeats pleadingly. His mouth never moves. "And don't talk to anyone. Don't say a word, no matter what happens." 

Steve weighs the truth in his words against the panic making his muscles jump the longer they're confined. Without thinking he jerks his arms a final time. 

A broken strand of the rope turns inexplicably sharp and slices into his wrist. The binds fall away. 

Steve gasps from the pain that's dulled by shock and freezes. Looking up, he sees a puddle of blood spreading across the floor. Almost immediately it fills the closet-sized room and wells up to his ankles. 

"You have to get out of here. It's time for you to run." From the corner of his eye, the Soldier bites savagely at the vines that coil and uncoil around him, expertly dodging his teeth, and his bound arms strain to reach for Steve. "They've got me now. If I catch you, I'll kill you. Don't let me catch you." 

The blood continues to rise around them, an impossible amount. It climbs past his exposed hands up to his chin, scalding hot. 

"Steve." 

When Steve focuses on him again, the Soldier is Bucky Barnes, young and cleanshaven. He's all black and white like a photograph, his army cap tilted at an impudent angle. 

" _Go_." 

Steve's body moves against his will. He slogs through the waist-high blood in slow motion, the splashes as loud as gunfire in the enclosed space, just barely drowning out the sound of the Soldier snapping at the vines, and when he turns around there is a door that hadn't existed seconds ago. It doesn't have a doorknob. When he touches it, it explodes open as though he'd kicked it down, revealing abject darkness. What feels like needles stab his back and he jolts forward, feet flying over the slick floor. 

The corridor is so narrow he has to run sideways, and something is biting the back of his legs. Panting and enraged howls pursue him, echoing in the hallway from every direction. Beneath it he hears, faintly, several different voices calling his name. 

"Ah, Captain Rogers." 

He stops running. 

He's standing in a white, windowless room. There is nothing in it but flickering fluorescent lights overhead. He whips around. 

He's never seen the man in person but he's dreamt of him for years. His beady eyes bulge behind glasses the size of dinner plates and his latex gloves are stained black, blood dripping from a metal tool in his hand. 

"We have been expecting you," Zola says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is kind of short but I promise it won't take as long for the next chapter!


End file.
